


Gogol: A Tale Of Mad Love

by peterlorrecompanion



Category: Mad Love (1935), Peter Lorre - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Peter Lorre - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-31 00:28:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3957583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterlorrecompanion/pseuds/peterlorrecompanion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In this sequel to the 1935 film "Mad Love," a newly reanimated Dr. Gogol leaves Paris for Southern California, where he resumes his transplant experiments using would-be starlets from the streets of Los Angeles as tissue sources. The proximity of Yvonne Orlac, now a Hollywood star, results in a fateful series of events involving multiple murders, cutting edge transplant surgery, and a daring rescue from a tank of sea lampreys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gogol: A Tale Of Mad Love

"Madame la Baronne? This is Dr. Wong." The man sounded like he was in tears.

"Wong, what's the matter?"

"Dr. Gogol--he's dead."

"Oh, God in Heaven," muttered the Baronne.

"He was stabbed in the back," Wong sobbed. "Stephen Orlac did it."

"But how could this happen? I thought Orlac was in jail."

"They let him out with a police escort. Who knows why. He went straight to Gogol's house--threw a knife at him--killed him! The police were right there when he did it!”

"Oh, this is insupportable!"

The Baronne smashed her fist against the table. The soft gold clasp of her watchband snapped; angrily, she threw it aside.

"First Hitler. Now the gendarmes of Paris are acting asescorts for assassins! What's happening to the civilization of Europe?"

It was then that she realized what an opportunity this was.

"Dr. Wong--how long ago did this happen?"

"Not long.... When? Maybe around ten o'clock."

The Baronne fumbled for the watch. "That's good--that's good timing," she said. "They won't have started the autopsy yet. Where are you now? At the clinic?"

“Yes.”

"I'll meet you there in ten minutes. Have you got an ambulance there?"

"I think so."

"Excellent. Hold it, don't let anyone take it. We'll take it to the rue Morgue. It'll be less conspicuous than my car." She hung up.

"But why?" said Wong.

 

***

 

"How did you do it?" Wong whispered, as they carried the stretcher with its sheeted burden back to the ambulance.

"The coroner is a particular friend of mine. Anyway, the police won't mind if this little cadaver happens to vanish. It's as much evidence against them as against Orlac."

She drove at speed with the siren on, her reddish gold curls snapping in the wind.

"Where are we going, Madame?"

"To my villa in Neuilly."

"Why don't we do it at the clinic?"

"No, the detectives will be there by now, poking around. Besides, you won't have all the equipment we'll need."

Wong laughed shakily. "This is so fantastic. Are we mad, Madame?"

"No, we're scientists. Just testing an old family recipe of mine. Who knows what the result will be? But I've always wanted to try it. It certainly won't matter to HIM if it fails. But I tell you this. If there's one person who truly deserves to live on this earth, it's Gogol. "

"Did you know him very well?"

"Only enough to know he's the most brilliant surgeon of the twentieth century."

She reached for his hand, grasped it firmly. "Let's see what the greatest surgeon of the nineteenth century can do for him."

 

***

 

"This won't be easy," Wong cautioned her, "and I'm far from the best man for this type of procedure. I wish we could bring in a good thoracic specialist. But I'll clean him up the best I can."

Wong took more care and time than he would with a living patient, making the most delicate incisions, prying back the layers carefully to preserve as much tissue intact as possible. He did a job of fine tailoring, mending the gash that had caused the lung to collapse and hemorrhage, the heart to convulse and fail. He put the abdomen neatly together again, then closed the mouth of the puncture wound as the Baronne approvingly fingered his stitching work along the backbone. "Gogol couldn't have done better himself! " she murmured. Wong blushed.

Together they loaded him onto a wooden pallet connected to a rig, which the Baronne winched up halfway to the ceiling, then, with Wong pulling along with her, hauled sideways and lowered into the tank of conducting fluid.

Bald as an egg, round as a Buddha, floating nude in the liquid suspension, little Gogol resembled a stillborn fetus, indifferent to his imminent journey down the birth canal. "What you did was the hard part," the Baronne said, gripping Wong's shoulder for a moment before throwing the switch.

Gogol bobbed and smoked as the fluid sizzled. The Baronne thrust the switch back; he rocked violently, then settled as the liquid undulations ceased. Cautiously they drew him out of the tank. "He feels heavier now, don't you think?" said the Baronne.

Wong hooked on the stethoscope and pressed the metal disk to the moist skin, listened anxiously. Then his face contorted in silent laughter. The Baronne snatched the stethoscope and listened. Then she shrieked like a delighted little girl. They grinned at one another as they took turns taking in the soft throbbings, the rustling sighs of the lungs. The Baroness seized Wong and swiftly kissed his checks, his temples, his lips, the bridge of his glasses. "Dear Papa Wong!" she said. "Just took at our beautiful new baby!"

 

***

 

As they read about the particulars of the case in the newspapers, Wong and the Baronne realized the graveness of their situation, that they were now harboring a fugitive. Apparently, at the moment of his murder, Gogol had been trapped in a compromising situation on a couch with the wife of the man who killed him. Orlac claimed that when he threw the knife at Gogol, he had stopped him in the act of strangling Yvonne; there were witnesses there, including Orlac's constabulatory escorts, who weren't sure that's exactly what they saw, but they were willing to support Orlac's defense. This meant that Gogol would be liable for charges of assault with intent to commit murder, or something of the sort, should he be found alive again. Worse, Orlac was charging that it was Gogol, not himself, who had stabbed Orlac pere to death, claiming Gogol had concocted some bizarre scheme to win Yvonne for himself by framing him for the murder of his own father. God knows Orlac was grasping at straws, but the police, in their panic, were ready to back any alibi to defend their idiotic decision to loose a suspected murder on poor Gogol.

To lose all their restorative work to the guillotine after last night's triumph was an intolerable proposition. "Let that cretinous piano player Orlac go on and lie his tongue black," said the Baronne. "He'll get it in the neck anyway. As long as they think he's dead, Gogol will be safe."

Gogol still floated insensate, deep in his subconscious mind. He was suffering from shock, as well as the other traumas of death, major surgery and resurrection, and though his vital signs were reassuring, he remained comatose. The Baronne wouldn't leave his bedside. She bathed him, changed him, monitored his temperature and pulse, talking to him all the time as though he could understand, worrying about every air bubble in his intravenous drip. It was all Wong could do to keep her from sleeping there with him. "I want to be here when he opens his eyes," she insisted.

It went on like this for days, then weeks. Wong hurried back and forth between Neuilly and the clinic; the work was backbreaking now that Gogol wasn't there, and as Gogol’s chief assistant he was expected to assume responsibility for the entire operation, as well as fulfill his regular duties. Unlike the Baronne, who was rich and influential enough not to care, he was profoundly aware of what his involvement in this affair might mean. If the authorities found out, the possibility of prison would be the least of his concerns: he might be deported, his career and reputation destroyed. Wong was a candid young man, unused to duplicity, and having to dissemble with the others at the clinic about Gogol being dead was a terrible strain. Luckily his European coworkers did not expect him to snivel and carry on about their grief as they did.

For her part, the Baronne thought nothing about the outside world. Her friends were used to her disappearing periodically on some adventure or other, and her servants were used to staying out of rooms when told to, so the little downstairs chamber where Gogol was kept remained sacrosanct, although a rumor began circulating that she had secretly been tending an old flame who'd been stricken by some unspeakable disease. There was one persistent visitor, an Argentinean financier who had the temerity to push aside her maid and thunder round the place, But when he finally found the Baronne, she made him sorry he'd done it and he left the country sadly the next day, minus both a mistress and a principal investor.

Meanwhile, fretting about the possibility that Gogol might develop bedsores or some other revolting invalid condition, the Baronne sent instructions to her parfumerer to make up a special massage cream, according to a formula she'd created herself. And she was just testing it out for the first time on her patient one afternoon when, unexpectedly, she felt a kick.

A reflex, maybe? She turned him over. His eyes were still closed. She lifted a lid; nothing. Then, looking down, she saw that in his condition he was still capable of yet another involuntary response.

"Dr. Gogol! This is most improper."

Naughty Magdalena, what are you thinking? But mightn't it be just the thing to bring him around?

Using a bit of the cream, she made a start, cautiously, watching him. The eyes were still closed, but there was a definite somatic response. The breathing came heavier, the pulses throbbed. She labored on more intently, fascinated as she observed the struggles to each plateau, automatic and familiar as always yet never before so miraculous, as it built inexorably to the eruptionshe jumped back in confusion as he cried out, and his eyes popped open.

"Now don't be frightened," she said, to herself as much to him.

He stared wildly at her as she moved back to her little chair by the bedside. 

"Do you know who I am, Dr. Gogol?"

"You are ... Baroness von Sieber," he said, weakly.

"Do you know what has happened to you?" she asked eagerly.

A look of panic.

"It's all right," she said quickly. "You've been ill. A bad man has hurt you. But you're safe now. Dr. Wong and I are taking care of you."

"Wong?”

“He's at the clinic now. Shall I call him?"

"No. Stay.”

He had used up his strength; his eyes closed. She thought her heart would burst with delight. She rearranged his bedclothes, used the towel to mop up the sheets. She took his temperature, listened to his heart. What a splendid bit of work he was!

"Madame," Gogol said softly, then said something inarticulate and faint.

"I'm sorry, Doctor, I didn't hear that.”

Something, something, "Yvonne."

"Don't you worry about that little ... thing," she told him. "There's nothing she can do to you now. I'll protect you.”

"But I...... His words slurred off again.

She ought to send for Wong, to see this, but she couldn't bring herself to leave Gogol, even for a minute. Leaning over him, her arm resting against his pillow, she looked and looked, and wondered at why he was so beautiful to her.

 

***

 

Gogol slept for several hours. When he awoke, he was amazingly sentient. He asked for a glass of tea and, shyly, the use of the receptacle under his bed, which the Baronne tenderly attended to.

Wong was as exhilarated as she was. He embraced and kissed Gogol, then excitedly started explaining all the procedures they'd used to bring him back from the dead. An ordinary person might have been shocked into his grave again, but Gogol seemed fascinated.

"So that was death," Gogol said. "It was lovely. But I'm glad to be back. Only, please, could you put a little more morphine into that intravenous drip?"

At his request, they brought him the papers. He read all the items about Stephen Orlac's trial, which had started the previous week. "How could they say such terrible things about me," Gogol said. "It's not true, any of it."

"We know it's not true, Doctor," said faithful Wong.

"Strangling her with her own hair! I would never do that! If I did I'd surely remember it. Besides, I could never harm her, I ... I loved that woman."

The Baronne scowled.

"I must clear my name," said Gogol. "I can't let them say these things about me, that I'm a murderer, a perverted lunatic! I must testify before the court and tell them I'm innocent."

Wong and the Baronne looked at one another. "I shouldn't do that, Dr. Gogol," said the Baronne.

"Of course I should! Do you think I'd allow that Orlac to besmirch my professional reputation? Dr. Wong, call my lawyer, Monsieur Endore. Tell him I need to see him right away."

 

***

 

"I'm sorry to tell you this, Doctor," said M. Endore, "but it's decidedly to your advantage to be dead right now.”

Gogol stared unhappily at the tray of brown bread and cucumber the Baronne had brought him.

"The question of your guilt or innocence is unfortunately immaterial. You would be brought to trial, should your existence be known. And with the police almost certain to testify against you as eyewitnesses, there'd be little chances for an acquittal.

"What I'd suggest," Endore continued, taking an incisive bite of cucumber, "is that you leave Paris as soon as possible--leave Europe entirely as a matter of fact, and come to life on some other continent. Brazil, maybe, or the South Seas. It's easy to live there under an assumed identity. Not to mention, a warmer climate might do you good in your current condition."

"You mean start my life over, as somebody else?"

"A lot of people would cheer at the chance. I know I would."

"I suppose I could always start up a practice again in some remote place."

"Dr. Gogol, it's one thing to forge identity papers," M. Endore said earnestly. "It’s another thing entirely to use a false medical license. Besides, you're forgetting the obvious fact that you are simply too famous to get away with it. You've given lectures, chaired conferences all over the world. Your picture's been printed in the newspapers. Even your surgical techniques are unique, they're like trademarks. There are a million ways you could give yourself away if you tried to practice medicine again. But why should you? You've independent means. I could arrange for you to have access to your fortune, through whatever alias you chose, and you could live comfortably for the rest of your life. You're still a young man, and there's plenty of time to think of an alternative career, if that's what you'd want."

"But what about my work here, the Gogol Clinic?"

"You should leave that to Dr. Wong," replied M. Endore. "In your will you appointed him your successor at the clinic, and executor of your estate. You couldn't have made a wiser choice; he's a trustworthy fellow.

"Now here's my plan. Since you are dead, in the world's eyes, we shall have to follow the letter of your will, which as it stands leaves everything to the Gogol Foundation. Is that in accordance with your wishes, still?"

"Yes, that's fine," said Gogol, "except what does that leave me?"

"Exactly. So what we will do is to draw up a codicil to your will. We'll say it's something you appended just a few days before you met your unfortunate end. You'll sign it and date it, let's say June 10, and Wong and the Baronne will witness it. It's good that she's in on this, since she's on the board of trustees for the clinic: a perfectly plausible choice for you.

"What the codicil will say is that you have left a certain portion of your estate--whatever you think you may require--to M. Peloux, or whatever name you're going to be using hereafter. Then I shall notify M. Peloux in Brazil, or wherever you happen to be, of your bequest. This way you can enjoy all the benefits of being Dr. Gogol, without having to answer for any of Gogol's criminal liabilities." 

"To leave Paris," Gogol said disconsolately. "And never see Yvonne again." 

Endore smiled and patted Gogol's knee. "You're a loyal lover," he said, "still thinking of your mistress like that." 

Gogol crumbled his bread; an ironic smile caught his lips. "I wish I'd had as much success with that lady as you and everybody seems to think," he said. "I would have died much more happily." 

 

***

 

M. Endore drew up the codicil that afternoon, and brought it over directly for the signings. Immediately afterwards, he sent Wong and the Baronne out of the room. "I think you should make preparations to leave, now," M. Endore told him."Call my office when you are ready, and I'll make the arrangements for you. I have your passport and identity papers ready. I recommend that you be as discreet as possible. I know that your friends have been very generous in taking dangerous risks for your sake, but remember that you, too, have a responsibility towards them, not to betray them as well as yourself. I know you'll probably want to stay in contact in some way or other with Wong, for the sake of the clinic. But the Baronne is another matter. In my opinion she's compromised herself unnecessarily, keeping you here at her residence. I know it must be awfully appealing to have such an alluring creature at your beck and call. How do you do it, Dr. Gogol? But I think it would be the honorable thing to do to simply disappear from her life, without telling her where you're going." 

Despite Gogol's protests--"It would seem so ungrateful"--that's how it was done, before dawn, while the Baronne slept. She woke, went to his room, it was empty, and no one knew why. Not even Wong would tell her. She cried for days, haunted his empty room, slept in his cot. When she finally went out into the world again, three weeks after his departure, she wore black. "Magdalena's lover has died," her friends told one another. 

 

***

 

Now that his position and fortunes had substantially risen, it was time for Wong to realize his heart's desire. He'd sent off a cable to Lily in Shanghai, bearing his proposal. The answer carne back: "Are you sure?" 

He'd quickly arranged for her transportation to Paris. There was no question of even a honeymoon visit to the old country, let alone a traditional wedding with all the family there; he was far too busy to leave the clinic now, so he and Lily would have to make do with a French civil ceremony. Lily said she didn't mind, but his parents were already aghast at his making his own match. Wong asked her to send them a picture, to assure them that she was at least a Chinese girl. And a very pretty one, Wong realized with a start as he opened his envelope (Lily had sent him one too.) Roundfaced and dimpled, with the seductive mouth of a film star, her glossy hair sweetly twined in old-fashioned braids--that would have to be bobbed--but otherwise, perfect. He'd never noticed, or had he just not remembered? Well of course, it wasn't her face that had won him.

By the day Wong was to meet her at the train station, he was almost mad with excitement. He'd purchased a new suit for the occasion, which he'd badly needed anyway, and brought a huge sheaf of lilies in puce tissue paper to lay in her arms. He arrived an hour early and paced impatiently up and down the platform, denying his ache to sit down for fear of getting creased. Finally he had to give in and perch on the edge of a bench.

The train was two hours late and took forever to unload. Europeans everywhere, not a single young Asian lady. He asked an attendant. "The porters are coming with her," the attendant told him. "It takes a little time, you understand."

His heart leapt as he saw them negotiating the wheelchair down the steps. Then, there it was--a little brocade shoe, hovering like a wary sparrow--and the girl herself appeared at the door of the train, leaning on a porter's arm, biting her lip. So tiny they were! those delicate, artfully contorted blossoms of flesh she struggled to balance on could hardly take her down those steps, let alone to the edge of the platform, especially not in this rude, jostling crowd. Wong would have swept her up in his arms and carried her himself. But the rue-tinged smile she gave him and her "Hello, Wong" told him it would he better just to hand her into her wheelchair.

It was clearly beneath her dignity to lower herself to such an ugly contraption (though he'd sent her the best one in the clinic), but it was the only way she could possibly negotiate her way out of this place. Half-buried in flowers, she relaxed in the front seat of Wong’s new motorcar and enjoyed his endearingly rusty attempts at flattery, gazing out the window as he drove her past all the places she loved best: the Arc, the Louvre, the Opera. The European style suited her: massive and grand, like their symphonies. She was less impressed by the Gothic exterior of the Gogol Institute, but Wong assured her they wouldn't be staying in the former director's old bachelor apartments forever, that she could choose and furnish her own proper home. "To live right here, where they killed him!" Lily said. "How can you stand it?" She even spoke of having the place exorcised, which made Wong uneasy. There seemed something risky and even impious in casting out the ghost of a live man, Luckily she got caught up in other business, like meeting the clinic staff, who instantly loved her, and having one of the nurses administer the syphilis test to them, that first momentous step to realizing the marriage bond. She was also introduced to the Baronne, who immediately set about ordering a proper Parisian lady's trousseau for her. "Pretty as a lily, absolutely," the Baronne said to Wong. "It's a pity about her feet. That girl's no fool, she's had a real education and she speaks perfect French. Where did you meet her?"

Wong blushed. "At a lecture," he murmured. "At the Orthopaedic Academy two years ago."

"What was she doing here? She was living on her father's estate in Malay, she said."

"No, they brought her in specially for the lecture. You see, she..." his tense mouth broadened in a sudden, ecstatic smile "she was the main exhibit. Oh, you see why I had to meet her!"

The Baronne considered, nodded. "Shoes," she said, "she'll need now ones--it won't be easy. She's shy about that."

"She won't have to go for fittings," he said tenderly. "I have all the measurements."

 

***

 

As Wong had expected, the Parisians were not at all considerate in dealing with Lily. They stared at her feet, made comments of the most candid nature and even tried to get her to describe the techniques her footbinder had used. "How would I remember how he did it?" Lily said. "I was only six years old!" Though Wong had to deal with these obnoxious people because of his social standing as director of the Gogol Clinic, Lily chose to decline most invitations, and played hostess only as business protocol demanded it. She looked after the household affairs, did needlepoint, listened to the radio and gramophone, and read. Although she disliked going out to parks and restaurants, where people would gawk at her in that hideous but obligatory wheelchair, she went out often to the theater and the cinema. Here at least the lights went down, and people wouldn't look at her anymore.

One evening, at Lily's request, the Wongs went to Montmartre to attend the Theatre des Horreurs. "It's awfully low class, and pretty disgusting," Wong cautioned her. "But the acts are relatively short. If you don't like it, we won't stay."

It was Wong, however, who got a shock at the Theatre des Horreurs. A placard outside announced a return engagement by Yvonne Orlac, in "The Death of Charlotte Corday."

"I can't believe that little bitch would do something ae that!" Wong growled. "What bad taste, on top of everything."

He realized that Lily had no idea what he was talking about, so he explained. Yvonne Orlac had been the headlining attraction at the Theatre des Horreurs a couple of seasons ago, and Dr. Gogol--who lived only for science, and was entirely innocent about women--had fallen madly in love with her. Yvonne was married to a concert pianist whose hands were crushed in a train accident. Evidently afraid of losing her chief source of income, Mme. Orlac ran to Dr. Gogol and, playing the scene for all she was worth, begged him for a miracle.

And, out of chivalry, Gogol made one: using an unprecedented technique that relied partly on his remarkable talent and unsurpassed knowledge, partly on sheer creative genius, he found a way to save Orlac's hands, using tissue grafted from a recently-deceased donor. But the accident had shattered Orlac's nerves, and Orlac became obsessed with the morbid fantasy that his new hands would not obey his commands, that they had a life of their own. That was the excuse he gave when he murdered his father, and later, when he stabbed Gogol. "He had run out of money and was mad at his father for not giving him a loan," said Wong contemptuously. "He killed Gogol because he caught him on the sofa with his wife--she knew how much Gogol worshipped her, and was probably trading on it to negotiate a little barter for her husband's medical bills. A thoroughly dirty business. And, of course, the slut and her husband blamed it all on Gogol, and got away with it."

The curtain went up. "It'll be a pleasure to see her get her head chopped off," Lily whispered.

She was thinner and slightly harder-looking than Wong remembered, and her characteristic, vampiric raven tresses were hidden under a wig of blonde ringlets. But this was doll-eyed Yvonne Orlac, bad acting and all. And it was awfully satisfying to see her head plop spatteringly into a basket, even if it was rubber and Mme. Orlac made her smirking curtain call, giving her hair a tug to demonstrate her head was still really attached to an unbroken neck.

"Well! If she's back on stage displaying herself, I guess she won't mind hearing from her old creditors!" declared Wong. And the next day he had the clinic secretary send her a bill for her husband's outstanding medical fees.

Two days later, Lily said to Wong at supper, "I saw Yvonne Orlac today."

"Went to a matinee?"

"No! She came here."

It seemed Mme. Orlac had sought to intercede with Mme. Wong, to have her bill forgiven. Evidently the reason she had returned to the stage, allowing her own personal scandal to be exploited for profit, was because it was the only way short of outright prostitution she could support herself. Her husband, the miscreant pianist, had suffered a series of breakdowns after knifing Dr. Gogol, partially brought on by the strain of the double murder trial. He was now in an asylum.

"She seemed truly sorry and humble. Of course, who can tell if she's acting or not?" Lily told Wong. "I told her the clinic was in no position to forgive her debt, especially under the circumstances. However, I thought there might be an arrangement possible to pay off the debt in smaller increments she could better afford. I said I'd ask you."

"She could have done the same thing through the billing secretary," Wong grumbled. But the payments were reduced to a weekly pittance that even a cheap actress could easily afford.

Soon afterwards, Lily received a grateful note from Yvonne. Orlac, as well as a sheaf of season tickets to the Theatre des Horreurs. "So I suppose you'll be best friends from now on," said Wong.

Which wasn't exactly what happened, but close.

 

***

 

This was an awkward situation for Wong. He was grateful to the Baronne for her discretion and loyalty. Now that Gogol was gone, and the Gogol Clinic was smeared with scandal, it was she alone who fought for it, persuading its patrons to continue funding it. She was also his key ally with the board of trustees, and aided him in a thousand ways as he taught himself the politics of management, building himself bit by bit into a worthy successor to Gogol.

In many respects he found that people were relieved he'd taken over. "Gogol was ingenious at times," one of the trustees said to him, "but you're much more levelheaded. I never really trusted him."

But in return for the Baronne's kindness, Wong was ashamed that he must withhold from her the one thing she wanted from him most, his knowledge of Gogol's whereabouts. She knew he was only protecting her, that further involvement with him could compromise her. Still she begged for news.

"I can tell you his physical condition has improved considerably," said Wong. "He's in an ideal location, very beneficial for his health but close enough to civilization for him to find competent doctors."

"But how is he otherwise? He must be so lonely.”

"In a way that's good for him. Since he's been off by himself, he's been thinking about things. I think, particularly, about Yvonne Orlac and what this neurotic obsession he has with her has done to him. He is undergoing psychoanalysis now and it seems to be doing him some good. Anyway, it's probably beneficial for him to not have to be the great Gogol anymore. He can live simply again, be an ordinary human being."

"I rather like to think of him as Napoleon at Elba," said the Baronne.

"But there's something else. I wanted to explain to you now, before you heard from other sources, so you wouldn't become alarmed. You see, there's been some difficulty with his finances. Some relatives of his have suddenly materialized and they're challenging the will."

"They're not trying to get the foundation's money!"

"No, they can't touch that; M. Endore made that part of the will airtight. But they're taking us to court over the codicil about the money for M. Peloux. They're demanding that we produce M. Peloux so they can make him answer for why Gogol left so much of his fortune to him."

"Well, we'll fight it," said the Baronne. "M. Peloux doesn't have to answer to anyone."

It was a disaster. The judge decided that, since M. Peloux could not be proven to exist, he must have been a delusion on Gogol's part--to deduce from Gogol's homicidal behavior shortly after making the codicil, he was demonstrably not of sound mind--and therefore declared the document invalid. The relatives didn't win their argument either: the money went into receivership. Gogol was now destitute. The Baronne found out that Wong had been sending him money out of his own pocket. "You can't afford that, on your pitiful salary," she said.

"I'm glad to give it. Besides, I can't let him starve, and in his condition he can hardly be expected to go out and earn a living."

"Wong, let me help him."

"It's kind of you to offer, but you shouldn't do that.'

"Why not? Signing a few checks won't compromise me. I'll make them out to you and you can remit them. You must have a clever system in place--they weren't able to trace those other payments to M. Peloux."

She took out her checkbook, made out a check and gave it to Wong. "That should be sufficient."

"It will go quite a long way," Wong nodded. "And I'll continue paying for the analysis, of course."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he goes four times a week now. Oh, but I don't mean for you to pay that, too," Wong said hastily, as she drew out the checkbook again meaningly.

"Tell me exactly how much he needs."

Wong told her. She wrote another check. "Now that's too rnuch," he said.

"Not for Gogol, It's not a sacrifice for me. Not since I invested in that cattle farm in Argentina last year."

Wong didn't like it--it made him feel doubly guilty--but the Baronne did offer Gogol a more generous and stable means of support. And the Baronne was so happy to have even this connection with Gogol that she went and talked the trustees into raising Wong's salary.

Two weeks after the Baronne signed those first checks, she received an air mail letter from Santa Monica, California, U.S.A. She read it over and over, trembling.

My dear Baronne,

When I was just a boy, starving in my shtetl in the Ukraine, a visiting landowner took pity on me, recognized my potential as a scholar, and took me with him to Paris to make something of me. Twenty-five years later, a noble lady selflessly uncovered her family's most guarded secret to literally restore me to life. And now, she brings me to life a second time?

How can I possibly repay you? My tears, my gratitude, my undying friendship are the only things I have to offer. That's pitifully little, but these I give to you now.

Up until now I have hidden myself from you to spare you from involvement in my misfortune. But I hope you will forgive me for taking this chance in writing you directly. Wong has told me that you have wanted to know my whereabouts. Destroy this letter before reading further, if you think better of it and prefer not to know. But I would like to give this, at least, to you, since you have been so generous to me.

I am living on the southern coast of California, in a quaint and vulgar district near Los Angeles known as "Venice." I have a small residence an the shore of the ocean, which is almost as beautiful as the Mediterranean and much cleaner. I am alone, living simply, but more peacefully now than ever I did when I had luxury and people crowding around to flatter and plead for favors from "the eminent surgeon." I have an exquisite seam, running along the thoracic vertebrae, which I admire sometimes using two mirrors. And every breath that fills my lungs, and every beat of my head, I dedicate to you, Madame.

Yours evermore  
(I write my name because I know you'll bum this immediately)  
Ivan Ilyich Gogol.

 

The next morning, when Wong telephoned the Baronne regarding a fundraising event she was planning to benefit the clinic, the housekeeper said she wasn't there, that she had given the staff sudden orders to close up the house and pack her baggage for an overseas journey, and then had left right after that, with no further information or instructions given. "I have never seen her like that, the way she was when I last saw her," the housekeeper said. "She was in such a state--you might call it happy, but it was beyond happiness. She was hysterical!"

 

***

 

When Yvonne Orlac found out, she went out and bought all sorts of things for the baby--music boxes, soft toys, blankets, nappies, clothes for all kinds of weather in various sizes. "You never know how big they'll be when they come out!" she told Lily happily.

"Stephen and I never got a chance to start a family of our own," she explained, when Lily protested such extravagance. "So you'll just have to share your little ones with me. "

 

***

 

Mme. Orlac was doing quite well these days. Not only were her performances at the Theatre des Horreurs doing ripping business, but she had started picking up day work in films. "They pay me RIDICULOUS amounts of money, Lily, I'm ashamed to tell you how much." She was even able to settle her accounts with the Gogol Clinic, and a good thing too--it needed every penny these days. 

Lily and Yvonne were taking English lessons together. The director Alfred Hitchcock had expressed interest in bringing Yvonne to London to appear in one of his films, and they were determined that she should be ready when the call came. "I'll talk to the baby in three languages," Lily told Wong, "and he'll be able to go anywhere and be understood. In Europe, in China, in Africa, America ....”

 

***

 

The house where Gogol was living was in a rather isolated area on the beach; it took the Baronne hours to find it. it was really little more than a shack of a tourist cabin, but the stretch of shore on which it was situated was unspeakably lovely, bleak and pristine.

Before she could knock, Gogol was there at the door. Solemnly, he took her hand and bowed over it. Then he threw himself to his knees and kissed the hem of her dress. He lifted his head, after this extraordinary salutation, and gazed up at her with those great dark eyes, as though she'd suddenly grown wings. She realized, with a little embarrassment, that after all she barely knew this man.

She helped him to his feet. "You must show me that beautiful scar of yours," she said.

"Oh, please!" he said, blushing. "Wait at least until I've made the tea." 

He went to ready the samovar, as, opening the parcels she brought, she took possession of his kitchen and set about preparing blinis.

Gogol gave her a detailed chronicle of his recovery. His lungs were functioning normally now, although he had suffered a worrisome attack of pleurisy a few months before. There were also some neurological irregularities, and he still felt considerable pain at times, but a complex of medications (which Gogol himself had recommended his doctors prescribe for him) seemed to be keeping these symptoms in check. 

Guiltily, the Baronne watched Gogol consummate an ecstatic rendezvous with his third plate of sour cream and black caviar. I must see to it he's taken care of properly, she told herself. That means a strict nutritional regimen and daily exercise. I'll have you strong again. You'll be pacing like a tiger in a cage, and then we'll see what you can do, you whom they gave up for dead, whose genius was almost lost to the world.

They talked far into the evening, Gogol telling her the rather lonely adventures of his life in exile. He described the ocean crossing, the eerie transcontinental train voyage which, the Baronne agreed, was like a rolling trip to the moon, with all the beautiful woods and meadows melting into weirder and weirder deserts and mountain ranges.

Gogol was taking no chances. He had learned to move inconspicuously, when he ventured forth at all, camouflaging his appearance with a slouch hat and dark glasses. Here in Los Angeles, under the withering sun, this wasn't considered such an eccentric getup at all, and so far his reclusive behavior hadn't seemed to excite any suspicions.

"This is like the city of Mahogonny, in the opera by Weill," Gogol told the Baronne. "You do what you please and no one asks a single question. The only crime is to run out of money."

"What a reliefl " said the Baronne. "Paris is such a gossipy town."

It was nearly midnight when the Baronne realized that Gogol had had far too much excitement and must go to bed. He retired discreetly to administer his nightly dose of morphine--he complained of a touch of angina--then arranged himself prone beneath her hands for his rubdown. She had brought along a fresh supply of his special massage cream for just this purpose.

Serene and glowing, redolent of the aromatic, vaguely Asiatic tinge of the parfumerer's cream, he sat up obediently as she fastened his pyjama jacket, then lay down as she tucked the bedclothes around him. "You're so sweet to me, just like a little mother," he said.

"Just do as mother says," she told him, "and all will be well."

She went back to her suite at the Chateau Marmont and immediately got into bed herself. She slept untroubled for nine hours without waking, something she hadn't done since she was a very small girl.

 

***

 

She hadn't really planned to stay; she hadn't thought of anything, actually, besides seeing him again. But as weeks passed, she thought less about Paris, and her current situation seemed the more natural life. For one thing, she was a Berliner, not a Parisian, and half of the old Berlin she knew seemed to be in Los Angeles now. Composers, musicians, writers, theater people, whom she and Victor had enjoyed so much back in those raucous, brilliant days of the Weimar Republic, had resurfaced here, older and chastened by the cruelty of exile, but still as superb as ever, still breathtakingly louche. And they had money here, many of them, in a way they'd never dreamed possible back at home. They had her over for coffee and champagne in gardens filled with roses the size of cabbages, took her riding over vast ranges on the most beautifulhorses she'd ever seen. And men as exquisitely bred as the horses, wearing princes' ransoms worth of tailoring and nearly as much jewelry as herself, murmured delicious invitations in her ears. It was gratifying for a weary widow to notice the envious looks she was still capable of inspiring, even in some of the freshest American beauties she met. After a twenty year career as a first-class flirt, one grows fearful of being played out. But she looked in the mirror now, and wondered how she had ever felt so old and tired, this woman who hadn't changed a bit since she was twenty, only looking happier now, and more worthy of love.

After her long sadness, it was such a pleasure to have Gogol again to absorb herself in. She visited him every day, listened intently to his progress reports, prepared meals for him, looked after his creature comforts. Under her care, he steadily regained his physical and mental powers; even his need for the morphine suppositories seemed to decrease. It was fall now, and the sun was horrible, even in the mornings; but when evening came and it became cooler and more tolerable, the Baronne took him out for walks along the beach. It was exciting then, in the dim fading light cast by the nearby cottages, walking alongside the vast roaring thing they could barely see. 

It was during one of these twilit walks that the Baronne began to learn things about Gogol she would later have given anything not to know. 

It began, actually, before they went out. The Baronne had gone into Gogol's bathroom to brush her hair when she felt something crisp under the rug. At first she thought it was something the maid had hidden there; it wasn't something she would associate with Gogol, just a cheap photoplay magazine. Then she noticed who had managed to get her picture on the cover, and felt her cheeks burn.

She had put it off until they were well into their walk. Careful to modulate her voice in as unemotional a way as possible, she asked, "Do you ever think of Yvonne Orlac these days?"

She caught a look at him, she hoped, without seeming to look. In the dimness, his features seemed to thicken; his eyelids drooped.

"How can I not think of her?"

He moved farther away from the light, almost a shadow, his substance lost in the darkness.

"I tried to do exactly what Dr. Romm told me to do. I tried to put all thoughts of her out of my mind, to try to break myself of this compulsive urge for her. And I was good, I tell you. I never once tried to contact her, though I started to do it a million times. I would have given myself away just to hear her voice on the telephone. But I held myself back, I was firm with myself. And I felt I was getting control again.

"But now the most horrible thing has happened. Do you know what she's done? She's followed me here! Every time I pick up a newspaper, every time I go into town it seems, I see her name, I see her picture! Why did she have to go into the cinema? And why did she have to make pictures for Alfred Hitchcock?" he cried in frantic despair.

"That last one was so popular, it played everywhere. And last week I did a terrible thing. I let myself stop outside the cinema and look at her there on the wall. It was irresistible, I felt I must go in. So I did and right away, there she was, the ghost of her in silver and black, twenty feet tall, looking right down at me! I felt so helpless, I felt she would swallow me." He buried his face in his hands.

Then the little shadow man raised his head and looked at her, the wet surfaces of his eyes catching the faraway lights. "I know I can't go to her," he said. "But where can I hide myself, when she comes for me?"

He turned into darkness again, and recited, in a low voice: "'She was his life, The ocean to the river of his thoughts, Which terminated all."'

You certainly know your English poetry, Dr. Gogol.

"Come in now, Doctor," she said abruptly. "You'll catch a chill."

This desert climate was treacherous; all the warmth drained off the minute the sun disappeared. She had kept him out too long; she heard the rasps in his breaths and saw him shiver. She made up a fire quickly and put him in front of it, then went to the kitchen to fix some hot buttered vodka.

That cheered him up all right. "But I thought you'd forbidden me this," he said cautiously, as he took the glass from her.

"It's allowed tonight," she replied curtly, and retired to her own glass. She finished it off, then went back for another one, a cold one as she didn't feel like waiting this time. She felt confused, humiliated, and why? What did you expert? What did you expect?

From the amchair in front of the fireplace came a sensual sigh. "That was wonderful," he murmured. "I'm ready for my rubdown now."

"Oh, of course, Dr. Gogol, certainly, Dr. Gogol." Down with the last drop from the glass, and into the bathroom with you, Nurse Sieber.

Gathering up the towels and the jar of cream, she felt that crisping under her feet and snatched the thing up, ready to rip it to bits and flush it down the loo, but then she thought better of it. Seizing the vodka bottle and her glass as she passed, she flounced back to the fire and sat down on the rug. "What have you got there?" Gogol asked warily.

"Just some reading matter from under your rug, Dr. Gogol. " She leaned on her elbows, snapping the pages forward. "There it is!" she said, stopping and slapping the page. "Just look at that! All these candid, natural photographs, none of them posed, taken on the set of her latest film, her ... Hollywood debut," she said as she read, faltering suddenly.

"Dr. Gogol," she said, dead serious. "That woman is here.

"No wonder you've been seeing so much of her lately. Twentieth Century Fox signed her to a contract, they've brought her over to make her first American picture. 'Hollywood's Newest Damsel in Distress.' Why do you look at me like that, didn't you know, didn't you read this? No, of course you didn't," she muttered, “you just looked at the pictures."

There were pages and pages of Yvonne, a Gogolian debauch of tantalizing images. Yvonne's new wax morphodite in Tussaud's. Yvonne laughing with Hitchcock. Yvonne caught in Expressionist shadows, reeling in fear from a hairy hand. Yvonne in manacles, mouth stretched in a scream. Yvonne being strangled by Leslie Banks. Yvonne being throttled by Karloff. Yvonne holding a kitten in the flower garden of her new Hollywood home.

"Do you know where Holmby Hills is, Doctor?"

"Where?" he asked, head in hands.

"About ten miles from this place," she replied gloomily, reaching for the vodka. "You can get there by red car, probably. A ten-minute taxi ride if you get a frisky driver."

I've lost him, I've lost him and I never even had him.

"Madame, if you don't mind," Gogol said wearily, "I would like my massage now."

Stiffly, she began unfastening her cuffs preparatory to tucking back her sleeves, then hesitated in mid-tuck.

"No," she said. "No, wait, Dr. Gogol."

Magdalena, what are you thinking now?

"Something just occurred to me," she said, reaching for the bottle again. "You are the world's expert on physical therapy. And all these months, all that talent in your hands has been going to rot." She choked back another tot of vodka. "Tonight, Dr. Gogol, you will be the one to give the massage."

Pop-pop-pop-pop went the pearl buttons on her blouse. Whizz it went, over the back of his armchair as he rose in astonishment, as she reached round for the back of her brassiere--she didn't believe in slips. Back nicely bared for him now, she loosened the fastener of her skirt and snuggled down into the rug, her check nestled on the back of her hand. She waited.

She heard the scrape of the jar lid, then the huff of his breath as he warmed the cream in his hand. And then, with a prickle of shocks, the tips of the most gifted orthopedist's fingers in the world alit at the base of her neck.

It was delicate at first, a series of sharp, light arabesques. Then the pressure spread by degrees, from the fingertips to the thumbs and heels of the hands. She felt each separate muscle group rise to his touch as he summoned it and worked it to his will. He was firm, stern with each resistant ridge of tissue; if it wasn't pliant he'd force it; it became a rough, almost painful straggle. As he dug into the pit of her spine, she cried out, writhing involuntarily, then, swooning, gave her shoulders a twist and turned over. What had once been rumored to have been the subject of a rowdy Berlin cabaret song, "Magda’s Nectarines," bobbled contentedly as she lay beaming up at him. "Oh, thank you, Gogol," she sighed.

She rolled onto her side, pillowed her head in the crook of her arm and closed her eyes. But presently her breathing was oppressed by a countering breath, tinged with hot buttered vodka, smothering her out of her drifting peace. She opened her eyes to see Gogol, just that distance away where the face of another person is distorted by closeness into just two bulging, close-together eyes, like a crazed insect.

"You want your massage now, Doctor? I'm sorry, I'm too sleepy, I had too much of that vodka. I'll do it twice tomorrow.”

"That is NOT what I want," said Gogol pointedly.

She sat up, a little cross at being disturbed, and felt about for her brassiere. "Dr. Gogol," she said, "we both know what it is you want."

Not finding any clothing of her own, she pulled on Gogol's discarded jacket and sprawled back, lighting a cigarette. Gogol looked down at her intently, his face red from the firelight.

"You want Yvonne Orlac," she said. "Well, here she is, right at your doorstep. Who's to say this isn't how it's fated to be? If it's worth your life to see her again, if she really is your life, this ocean that all your thoughts drown in, why not go see her? Who knows, she may be regretting all those things she said about you in the courts. Her husband's out of the way now. Once she sees you again, she might be glad to run away from--run away with you. Gogol, a man like you ... he leaves his mark on every woman he's touched."

A low chuckle, then, like a thunderclap, a burst of laughter so violent she dropped her cigarette in alarm.

Gogol threw back his head and roared. "You think I am Don Juan? "You think I am a--a great TOUCHER of women?”

Gogol dropped down to her level, picked up the cigarette before it burned away much more of the rug. "Let me tell you something," he said sternly. "There was one time--one time that Yvonne Orlac gave herself to me in any way. The night I met her, I got to kiss her. But that didn't count, she was kissing everybody that night. The theater, you know, they do things like that.

"In all my life," Gogol continued, fingering the smouldering cigarette, "no woman has ever wanted me near her. Except when she was under anaesthesia, and I had a scalpel in my hand. Until tonight." He pinched out the cigarette, tossed it away.

"Magdalena."

Oh! He's never called me that before.

Now this was the old Gogol. Rampant, imperious, commanding. Even, she thought, with growing amazement, when he has absolutely no idea what he's doing. But isn't he a doctor?

"Magdalena. I hate to be crude. But do you--"

"Oh, yes, I have something in my handbag."

"Will you go get it, please."

She carried it to the bathroom, and applied it there. Now where did he go?

"In here, Magdalena."

In the dark, lying flat. Oh, God, I feel like I'm about to be executed.

"Please, I'd rather not go in by the wall," she whispered. “I'm claustrophobic, you see--”

"Whatever pleases you, Magdalena...."

Ach! You've obviously studied up on this; you've had your campaign all planned for some time, I'll wager. Though the troops are not all in marching order! a reprieve, thank God! Too bad you were so conscientious, it would have worked a minute ago. Or maybe not. No--no no. No, that won't help, don't bother, it won't work. All right, sometimes it does. But you see, it keeps failing out. That's it, give in, time for retreat, my Bonaparte.

He lay back, as if arranging himself for his coffin. "We'll try it again in the morning," he said, and then he slept.

She waited, hanging perilously on the bit of a ribbon of mattress that he left for her. She slid off and went to the next room, and started looking for the rest of her clothing. Magdalena, wait. What are you doing?

I can't. I can't explain.

She ran out to her car, still stockingless, shoes in hand, and drove back to the Chateau Marmont. She laughed when she saw the clock in the lobby. Is it still that early? And I'm not tired at all.

She took a quick sponge bath, got dressed, a film star gown she'd sent for earlier in the week, the color of emeralds. She redid her hair and scented herself. Now where will my friends be tonight? Probably that new place they'd just discovered, the fast American one with the jazz. The jazz was realer somehow here in Los Angeles, though she wasn't sure why; there were just as many Negroes in Paris.

Some of her crowd were there already. Of course the evening hadn't quite wound up to its tightest ticking point yet.

"Magdalena!"

"Ernst! Oh, my God!" 

It was Ernst Giese, that Viennese bastard, the one who'd been thrown out of the Psychoanalytic Institute. He was laughing, still handsome though a bit crumpled in the forehead, still with the eternal ivory cigarette holder in his teeth. He'd cornered her once in the Prater, right under Victor's nose.

"Are you twisting the minds of Americans now, Dr. Giese?"

"They love me!" he laughed. "They all come to me! You see, I understand them!"

"So you're practicing again?"

"I've got a lovely leather couch in the Bradbury Building. All the film starlets are taking turns lying on it."

"So that's why you came to Hollywood."

"I adore the American cinema."

"Well, you went through all the girls in UFA."

The usual introductory volley was over; now for the grim part. He sat her at his table, ordered her drink. "I suppose Hitler's boys chased you out, too," he began.

"But of course. You remember, Victor worked for the wrong coalition."

"When did you get out?"

"Thirty-three. We took a train two days before the Reichstag burned."

"Lucky, then."

"Not really. Victor died of a brain hemorrhage six days later." She sipped her bitters and rye and smiled to let him know she was all right. "Did you get your wife out too?" she asked.

"No. She wanted to stay."

“I’m sorry.”

"It was over with us before that. She kept talking about the dirty kikes. I said, that's my mother you're talking about. Anyway, I only married her for her father's department store." He raised his glass, spilled half of it down his sleeve. This evening was full of disasters.

"Now then," she said, taking his arm and dabbing it with her handkerchief, "we'll go out on the dance floor and dry you off."

 

***

 

The next morning she hurried past the front desk, but the bell captain caught her. "Mr. Pilloo has been calling for you," he said.

"Tell them to hold my calls, please," she told him.

She slept until twelve. She was taking a bath when they rang her. "Mr. Pilloo is downstairs to see you."

Christ! She'd forgotten to take out that thing she'd put in last night! She crouched, knotted herself up trying to catch a fingerhold on its slippery rim. Retrieving it at last, she examined its contents and groaned. Well, she had an excuse now to put him off, if he was thinking of carrying on with last night's preempted revelries.

"Tell him I'll be down to see him in ten minutes," she told them.

It couldn't have been twenty seconds; she'd barely gotten out of the tub and reached for a towel when he knocked. She snatched a pair of lounge pajamas from the back of the door, wiggled into them and went to answer his summons. There he stood in the door frame, a baleful tadpole staring up at her. "I couldn't sleep all night, Magdalena. Why did you leave me?"

"Come in, Mr. Peloux. " There were people in the hall. One of them was Ernst Giese. 

"I'm terribly sorry, Dr. Gogol," she said, as she bolted and locked. "I wanted to stay but I was so tired and I just couldn't sleep on that tiny little bed."

"I'll have to get a bigger one."

A knock. It was Ernst. "Excuse me, Madame. I noticed your friend dropped something outside your door."

He handed an envelope.

"Thank you, Ernst. Thank you. How thoughtful of you."

"Not at all," said Ernst, looking over her at Gogol. "Good afternoon, Madame." 

Bolt, lock.

"I saw the doctor today. These are the results of my blood test," said Gogol excitedly, opening the envelope. "You see? It's normal. You see what you've done for me?"

"The progress you've made, it's amazing."

"And only because of you. I should have sent for you earlier, I never realized what a gifted healer you are, you've a natural talent for--for the laying on of hands."

Knock, knock. "That's room service," she said, getting the door. They stood by demurely, as the waiter wheeled in and left, too quickly.

"I'm sorry, I haven't breakfasted yet," she said, sitting on the sofa with the tray. "Can I offer you anything?"

He gave the gentlest little smile.

Settling down close beside her, he watched her decapitate her egg. "I got a letter from Wong today," he said.

"How are things at the clinic?"

"Oh, terrible. The funds are running very low, and the building is falling apart. Wong's at his wits’ end. It's not his fault, it's the trustees, they keep fighting amongst themselves and sabotaging his efforts."

"Poor Wong! How’s his wife?"

"Not very well. There's been complications with her pregnancy, circulatory problems. Well, she's not getting enough exercise, with those feet of hers. He took her to the opera last month, to cheer her up, and it was terrible, they had to carry her up all those steps, nearly dropped her, and then the soprano had some kind of nervous breakdown onstage and they stopped the performance, and they had to go down all those steps again. It wasn't worth it."

"I miss the Opera," said the Baronne, through her toast.

"So do I.”

"I used to see you all the time there, all alone in your little box. You always looked so enthralled."

"Oh, yes," he murmured, drawing closer, "great music has such an effect on me, you've no idea. Do you remember that production of 'Don Giovanni' last season? I never missed a performance. That's my favorite, 'Don Giovanni.' ''La ci darem la mano ... la mi dirai di si ....'”

"You have a lovely voice, Dr. Gogol," she said, deftly shifting to the farther end of the couch. "Did you sing in the synagogue choir when you were a boy?"

"Magdalena," said Gogol, staring at the space on the sofa between them, "you are menstruating."

"Oh, God in Heaven!" She'd forgotten!

"Poor Magdalena!" he said, catching her round the waist as she tried to get up. "Are you in any pain?"

 

"No, I'm all right. I'll just go get cleaned up. Dr. Gogol," she laughed nervously, "what--oh! what--"

"Doesn't it hurt? Miraculous," he purred, "I've never--oh, it's....ah please--let me--”

She tore away and ran into the next room, slamming the door.

Some twenty minutes later she came out, still flushed, wearing a severe houndstooth suit. "Well," she said. "Now. It's time for you to go, Dr. Go ... gol.”

"Oh, why, Magdalena?"

"Actually, I'm leaving myself I have an appointment."

"Where? I'll go with you."

"It's at Westmore's. I'm having my manicure done."

"Really? I've always wanted to see how they did that."

"It's not customary for gentlemen to accompany people in places like that."

"Oh," he said sadly.

"I am sorry about last night, Doctor Gogol," she said, a little tenderly.

"Don't be, Magdalena, For my part, it was the most memorable night of my life."

"Really?" she said, faintly.

“Truly. Do you know, when I came out here all by myself, there were times when I'd open my door, and look out to the ocean, and think to myself, why don't I walk straight into it. That was how desolate I felt. And then I thought of you, and all you'd done for me. I couldn't bring myself to do it then. My life seemed more precious because you had given it to me."

"Dear Dr. Gogol!"

"To think that a woman of your beauty and accomplishments could give of herself so freely to me. I shall always treasure that. I mean that. And I hope somehow we shall always be together, as friends and--and companions, I hope."

"I hope so, too." 

"Well. I mustn't make you miss your appointment. Will I see you this evening?"

"Have I ever missed one of our evenings?"

"Of course not. I'll expect you at the regular time then, at seven."

"Make it eight."

"Well. Au revoir, Magdalena. I'll be thinking of you all day."

"Goodbye, Dr. Gogol.”

"Say au revoir."

"Very well. Au 'voir."

He paused at the door. "Nothing else?" he said.

She went to him dutifully. He seized her and penetrated her with a kiss so ferocious they both clung to the wall afterwards, gasping.

"I'll see you at seven then," he said, fumbling with the lock.

"Nine!" she called after him.

"Look at that guy, he's got blood on his hands," said the bell captain, as Gogol went by.

"Must have cut himself shaving," said the hotel detective.

The Baronne impatiently shed off her suit--it was stifling hot--got a brush and wet cloth, and scrubbed at the sofa until the stains were gone. Then she changed into a light dress and went warily into the lobby. Good, he was gone.

"Hello again, Magdalena." It was Ernst.

“I thought I recognized that fellow up in your room," said Ernst, offering his open case of Sobranies before fitting one into his ivory holder. "May I ask, is he one of us?"

“No, he's--White Russian, I think."

"Good thing. They don't go for Bolsheviks here, either. Boyfriend of yours?"

"No, just an acquaintance, friend of some friends. Look at the time, I'd better go now. I've an appointment at Westmore's."

"Are you busy this evening?"

“Well, I--”

"If you already have an engagement," said Ernst, "and you can get out of it, I'm having a little soiree at my cousin's beach house. I've invited some of the old Mutzbauer crowd, you remember, Stefan Schiff, Peter Lorre ... I know he'd love to see you again," he grinned.

He gave her the address. Dear God! All she wanted to do was to go back to bed, but who knew what perils might be waiting still at the Marmont? Perhaps she really ought to try to get in at Westmore's after all.

She decided to go to the cinema instead. of course, on a day like this--a man immediately sat next to her and began exciting himself She got up at once, smacked his lap with her handbag and stalked over to the other side of the auditorium. God damn it, they weren't going to chase her all over like this!

Well, look who's in this film! Yvonne Orlac! It was some medieval thing about two evil princes, or rather one good, one evil, and the evil one was chaining Yvonne up for a spot of fun. How well she looked in a wimple, and in chains!

And the strange thing about all this was that Gogol was in that same auditorium, two rows behind her. Through the rest of the film, through the newsreels and cartoons and into the Hopalong Cassidy picture when she left, they never even noticed one another. Well, it was dark.

 

***

 

"I'm so glad you came, Magdalena," said Ernst. They were handing round champagne cocktails; Ernst caught one for her. At the piano, Stefan Schiff struck up the verse of "Magda's Nectarines."

 

While, just a few miles down the coast, Gogol stood at his door, watching the waves breaking, breaking.

 

****

 

She was with Ernst--another vampire as it turned out, but rather a nicer one--when they called her. Gogol had given her number to his landlord, in case of a crisis. "Ernst, I've got to go," she said, looking for clothes. "It's Mr. Peloux, he's ill and they put him in the hospital."

"Why don't you wait until morning. They won't let you in this time of night."

"No, he needs me now. I know what's wrong with him, what medications he needs. The doctors won't know."

"I'll go with you," he said, but she'd ran out the door.

They tried to send her away, but she made a scene. She dragged the nurses in, gave them instructions, had them send for a doctor to make out the prescriptions. She sat by his bedside, took the little hand, kissed its bloody fingers. "My poor Gogol," she said, and the tears came.

His eyes slid towards her, all liquid darkness.

"I've been bad to you, Gogol. I should have come last night. You needed me, I wasn't there. Can you forgive me?”

She thought she saw the faintest nod, felt a tiny pressure from his fingers. "Don't be frightened, darling. You've had a brain seizure. But it's nothing really, you'll get over it quickly. I'll take you home tomorrow.

"Gogol, I swear to you. From now on I'll always be at your side. And I promise you this. Together we'll find a way for you to practice your surgery again. Would you like that, Gogol?"

A tear rolled down his check. "Don't cry, my dearest. With both of us crying, we'll get this damn bed all wet and we'll have to call in the nurse to wring it out. "

That was a smile! a little wobbly.

"You're tired. I'll let you rest. I'll come again in the morning. Au revoir, Gogol. "

Ernst was waiting for her. "You shouldn't have come," she told him.

"How is Peloux?"

"Better now. I told them what to do. He's out of danger now. Good night, Ernst."

"Magdalena, wait." He took her to a corner of a dark waiting room, where the nurses couldn't hear.

"I know it's presumptuous of a man who's only shared a woman's bed to pry into her personal life. But I have a feeling, Magdalena, that that man in there is something more than an acquaintance of yours. It he's your lover--if you'll be putting me aside to go back to him--I wish you'd tell me now."

Ernst watched her face for an answer, as she looked ahead of her, unmoving. "He's not my lover," she said at last. "He never was and he never will be."

"Are you unhappy about that?"

"No. It's the way it must be," she said, half to herself, "it's unthinkable otherwise."

Sensing his curiosity, she struggled for something safe to tell him. "I've been helping him recover after a bad accident. He's the only reason I'm here in America. We've been thinking of starting a business together, when he gets better."

"What's wrong with him?"

"It's a neurological disorder. It's complicated, he's been taking opiates and I'm afraid he's become a little too reliant on them. He's been seeing an analyst, perhaps you know her--Dr. Romm."

"Yes, she's a friend of mine."

"They say she's very good. But I wonder if it's really helping him. He behaves strangely sometimes--it's as if he turns into someone I don't recognize."

"Is he violent?"

The Baronne hesitated. "Some say that he is," she said. "I've never seen it myself. But we're all capable of anything sometimes, I think."

"It might be better for you if you got away from this fellow."

She lowered her eyes. "Come back to the Marmont with me," she said. 

He put his arm around her as they walked together; she leaned her head against his shoulder. 

"This little responsibility of yours seems like too much to handle all by yourself," he said. "There might be a way I could help you with him. After all, I'm a doctor."

 

***

 

"You mean, Dr. Romm isn't here today?" said Gogol, alarmed.

"She has a terrible migraine," Ernst replied. "She called me in tears. She begged me to reschedule all her patients for her--it's the secretary's day off."

"Why didn't you call me? I came all the way from Venice just for this appointment.”

"I called but you'd already left. The only thing I could do was to wait for you here and tell you myself.” 

Gogol looked so miserable that Ernst almost felt sorry for him.

"Dr. Romm said that yours was a special case," Ernst said. "She said it might be especially critical for you not to miss your session today."

"She's right about that."

"Well, this may not help, but Dr. Romm suggested that if it was necessary, I might fill in for her."

"You mean that I have my analytical session with you?"

"If that's what you want."

Gogol sank onto the couch. "I don't know about that," he said. "I've been in analysis with Dr. Romm for over a year now. It's gotten so complicated, the things we've discussed--I wouldn't know where to begin with you.”

"That's all right. I briefed myself on your case from Dr. Romm's records, before you came."

"You read my case file?"

"Just enough to acquaint myself with the particulars of your case."

Gogol stared at him, frightened and frightening.

"I can understand you'd be wary of a stranger knowing about your...peculiar situation," Ernst added quickly. "But I assure you I shall respect your confidences. Do you think Dr. Romm would have trusted your case to me if she thought there was any possibility that I would betray you? I respect my professional ethics as deeply as you do your own, Dr. Gogol."

This seemed to relax him.

"Well, if Dr. Romm trusts you this much, I will try to as well."

"Very good. Then when you're ready, we can proceed."

Gogol arranged himself on the couch. This was the signal. Ernst assumed the mask of silent impassivity. Surreptitiously, he pushed the toggle switch under the desk that connected to Dr. Romm's recording machine.

"I really don't know what to say."

"Why don't we start where you left off last time with Dr. Romm?"

"We were talking about what we always talk about. My...erotic problem."

A very long silence. The consummate professional, Ernst resisted the longing to prompt him.

"That is, we try to find out what happened, what made me this way," said Gogol. "But every time I get nowhere. She says I have a block, that I'm repressing recollections. What she says is true, I'm afraid. Perhaps some things are too terrible to bring up out of the depths. We simply cannot look at them.

"But it seems to me, you are a man of the world and--and you can understand fears and urges and things that someone like Dr. Romm would never dream existed. Maybe you might be the one to draw those memories out of me. Do you think that's possible, Dr. Giese?"

"Well, as you put it, Dr. Gogol, I am a worldly man. Certainly more worldly than Dr. Romm. And from what I've heard and seen, there's nothing new under the sun that you could possibly show me."

"All right then. I'll start at the beginning," Gogol said, slowly. "With that day when I was nine years old, when I came home front school and my parents told me I wasn't going to be living with them anymore."

 

***

 

Really, I can't help pitying the little beast, thought Ernst. But more than that, I pity Magdalena. As it happens, I've met that Count from Kiev, that so-called guardian of yours. I believe every revolting thing you said about him. Given your upbringing it's no wonder you ended up with such a vat of eels in your head. Dr. Romm must have inferred this sort of thing was in your past; she certainly is dead on about your fixation on that actress. But I'm amazed she overlooked the most salient element in your psyche: your sadistic tendencies. A common trait in surgeons, I'll admit, but usually sublimated to a greater extent than this. Dr. Romm believed your version of the Orlac escapade. I don't. I think you really did kill the old man, that you had it in for Orlac and wanted to frame him for murdering his own father, and that you did try to play "Porphyria's Lover" with Orlac's wife. It was probably the best orgasm you ever had, strangling her with her own hair. And being stabbed at the climax--that must have sent you absolutely over the moon. As for this business about coming back from the dead, I really think you've been watching too many Boris Karloff films.

Of course that's typical of psychopaths, their favorite fantasies blending into reality. Your facility at manipulating people, that's another classic trait. You've got Magdalena on your leash, though I suspect she's found you out to some extent. She's a normal girl, I don't think she'd fancy being the one to take Yvonne Orlac's place in your attentions. I pity the lady who'll be unlucky enough to succumb to the full force of your love. You'll exhaust her, if not worse.

It was time to go; he heard the cleaning woman down the hall, and it would be awkward if she discovered him here. He opened the recording machine, took out the disk, and slipped it into the shopping bag he'd carried in with him. As a quick afterthought, he took the ribbon off a box of chocolates he'd bought for Magdalena and wrapped it round the disk. Another present, perhaps? No, that would be the wrong strategy.

She'd only be angry at him. Worse, she'd think he was jealous. And he wasn't really, now that he knew she had told him the truth about herself and Gogol, more or less. But this displaced maternal obsession of hers--that needed watching. Gogol was consuming her, ruthlessly, without her seemingly realizing it. The idea of her, a noblewoman, playing nursemaid to this degenerate peasant, this felon on the lam!

When he was a boy, Ernst had cherished a daydream in which he discovered a girl in danger. There would be bad men maltreating her, molesting her. He would fight them off and rescue her. And then she would reward him. Now he had the potential to fulfill that boyhood ambition in real life. "That's one of the pleasures of being a well-adjusted adult, you come across these opportunities and you can act on thorn," Ernst told himself in satisfaction as he leapt down the back stairs.

 

***

 

"There you are! " cried the Baronne, as Gogol walked in after his session with Ernst Giese. "I thought you'd never get here!"

Excitedly, she told him what had happened that afternoon. She'd stopped by a friend's house for cocktails and had been struck by the sight of a singularly unhappy-looking man, staring into the deep end of the pool as though he would like to throw himself into it and never come up.

"That's Detlef Ungar," said the Baronne's friend. "His wife left him in the lurch."

It seemed that Frau Ungar, a great beauty approximately three-eighths the age of Herr Ungar himself, had become bored with her domestic routine and craved a career. So Ungar had obtained the financing to build his beloved a health and beauty spa, located some fifty miles north of San Diego on the Oceanside, where she could share with local heiresses and film stars the secrets of what attracted Herr Ungar to herself. But just on the eve of the opening of Hollylawn, this exclusive and expensive spa, the lady who'd launched the venture had run off to Chicago with a meatpacking magnate who had promised to purchase an entire cosmetics empire for her. So poor Ungar was desolate, having no interest in or aptitude for the rejuvenation business, or anything else on this earth in fact, now that his heart's delight had fled. "In other words, he'll sell out very cheaply," the Baronne told Gogol. "I've been down there already; it's an exquisite property. Would you like to see it?"

Gogol didn't see why not. So they motored down to Hollylawn, after telephoning ahead to Ungar. He was there to meet them when they arrived, sallow, looking shrunken in his rumpled suit. In contrast to the desolate scrub surrounding it, the little cluster of smart neo-Mission cottages that comprised Hollylawn was surrounded by lawns, palms, flowers and assorted desert greenery. "It would normally cost a mint to irrigate all this," confided Ungar. "But I have a friend at the water commission.

"That was going to be Audrey's place," Ungar continued, indicating a bungalow half-separated from the rest of the complex by a sandbar. "You see how it is, isolated, but you can get back and forth from the main building without anybody seeing you. Nice for living-in if you don't want to be bothered by the clients."

The Baronne looked meaningly at Gogol. "Will you show us the secret room, Herr Ungar?" she asked.

Ungar nodded, and took them into the main building, which was a sort of combination administrative headquarters and clinic, with rooms dedicated to exercise machines, massage tables, various types of therapeutic baths, and so on. Ungar led them into what was obviously the director's office, and, lifting a picture frame, felt along the wall. "I know this has been in every mystery movie ever made," he said. "But Audrey wanted it like this, so....

"You have to catch the spring just right," he grunted. At last he found it; a panel in the wall pulled open.

"God knows what she wanted this for," Ungar said, leading them in. "On second thought it's not that hard to guess." A little suite of windowless, bare rooms, soundproof, utterly inaccessible except through this hidden passageway. Gogol and the Baronne smiled at one another, with the same thought. Here they were: scrub room, operating room, recovery room. All that was needed was the equipment; the plumbing connections were already installed by the far-thinking and hygienic Frau Ungar.

Here they were, in the land where no one asked questions and money was the only morality. Where the greatest beauties in the world collected, to be with their own kind, only to find their youth and loveliness fading more quickly in the cruel aridity of the desert. Desperate to preserve their looks, to hold onto their studio contracts, to hold onto their husbands, women would pay any price, endure any secret suffering. And no one gave a damn what you did in the name of beauty. As long as you didn't use "Doctor" in front of your name, the licensing boards stayed away. Fate had spread this web for them all ready. Now it was just a matter of waiting there for something to stick.

 

***

 

The Baronne knew herself to be simply part of the stickiness. She had drawn upon her formidable powers to organize and launch the grand opening of Hollylawn, and it must be concluded that it was a success. Most of the celebrities she had lured there for the inaugural festivities were admittedly not of the rarest type, but the governor's wife had signed up for a week's treatments, and prospects looked promising. The true delights of Hollylawn were reserved for the unseen tenant of the springlatched suite behind the Baronne's desk, who came there on the sly, whenever she signaled that an interesting case might be available for his consideration.

The choice to take it or let it go she left to her little spider. In the past, he was known for his ability to cure deformity, to restore mutilated soldiers and crippled children to normalcy. Here, the opportunity was to correct the distortions that age and the natal accident of plainness had wrought upon the female form.

"It's more of a challenge, really," said Gogol. “Until they catch us, of course."

"They never will!" protested the Baronne. "And if they do," she added, "we can always run to Mexico."

 

****

 

"The first birth is always the most trouble," Wong told Lily, as she lay sweating after a really hideous bout of straining. "Next time won't be as bad, I promise."

It was frightening, and though Wong was an excellent bedside actor he wasn't sure Lily was convinced by his assumed assurance. This was coming on far too early, and it was taking too long. Lily wasn't very strong, and neither it seemed was the creature trying to find its way out of her. The doctor in attendance had at first recommended a cesarian, but Wong disputed him. Finally, it didn't prove necessary, and they found out why the infant had seemed so passive.

Looking at the little body, Wong thought for a moment about what he had learned at Neuilly. Then he felt such fear and nausea that he involuntarily pushed the little body away. Hearing Lily's weary sobs, he went to take care of her.

 

HOLLYLAWN NOVEMBER 4 1936  
DEAR DR WONG YOUR GRIEF IS OURS STOP PLEASE LET US HELP IN ANY WAY POSSIBLE YOUR FRIEND MR PELOUX

 

PARIS NOVEMBER 5  
MR PELOUX THANK YOU FOR MESSAGE STOP DIFFICULT TIME  
FUNERAL WEEK AGO BUT LILY STILL IN POOR CONDITION STOP FEAR MELANCHOLIA WORSE PHYSICAL WASTING WONG

 

HOLLYLAWN NOVEMBER 5  
DEAR WONG FORGET CLINIC BE OUR GUEST AT HOLLYLAWN STOP CALIFORNIA VERY HEALING AND MANY CHINESE HERE LILY WOULD LOVE IT  
PELOUX

 

***

 

Of course leaving the clinic at this crucial time was out of the question. Wong was very unhappy with the idea of sending Lily on such a long voyage, with only her maid for company. But Lily's obstetrician was of a different opinion. "Paris is bad for invalids. Especially this time of year. There's the risk of infection, pneumonia, and she's not a very hearty girl, Dr. Wong. In her state people tend to give up."

Yvonne met Lily at the station. "You poor girl, you must be bored silly after being shut up in that train for three days," she said. "Come spend the night with me before you go on."

Yvonne's driver took them up to a beautiful cream-colored villa in the hills. "Doesn't it look just like the cowboy movies?" Yvonne said. "If you go out in the garden, be careful, especially at night. There are snakes and wild dogs. I have a little cat and I used to put it out at night, but they told me, 'No! Don't do that! Something might eat it."'

In the evening, Yvonne took her to supper in Chinatown, which Lily found amusing and a little touching. The old people kept smiling at her, talking to her as she passed. Then Yvonne took her to a nightclub in a hotel, where she introduced her to a lot of her friends, some of whom Lily thought she recognized. Of course, she'd seen them in films. A very handsome man, Mr. Wilcoxon, flirted with her, and a wry, sweetfaced lady named Dorothy made a big fuss over her.

"Oh, don't go, don't go," everyone cried at the table, when Yvonne said it was time to leave. "You've got to stay till eleven at least! Clark Gable is coming!"

"I've a surprise for you," Yvonne said, on the way back. "I'm between pictures, so they said I could go with you to Hollylawn for a few days. I've booked myself in the cottage right next to yours. So we'll both become beautiful together!"

The Baronne herself welcomed them in the foyer, showed them their lodgings. She recommended they commence that morning with a simple beauty refresher, starting with cleansing and toning treatments and electromassage. Then, a consultation with one of the resident specialists, to plan a clinical regimen especially suited to each lady.

After being pounded, packed in ooze and steamed like a rice bun and somehow feeling oddly the better for it, Lily let herself be wheeled into a fashionably-appointed teal green office where, she was told, Dr. Peloux awaited her.

"Hello, Lily," said Dr. Peloux. "How are you feeling, dear?"

From the questions he asked, he seemed to know quite a lot about her. Wong probably wired her medical records ahead. She assured him she was much better--a comforting message to send to Wong, she thought.

"And how," said Peloux, interlacing the fingers of his soft little hands, "do you feel about life?"

"What a question!" said Lily. "How am I supposed to answer a question like that?"

"Let me put it another way. Tell me, how do you feel about your feet?"

Lily's skin scorched. This was going too far. She told the impudent little man precisely what she thought of someone who would ask such a thing, and what she thought of people of his complexion in general, their arrogance, their rudeness and their nonchalance about treating fellow human beings like freaks, who were the least bit different than they were. Did he realize that in her country, there were still people who looked upon her "freak" feet as emblems of beauty? Did he know what kind of pain she'd had to endure in order to possess these perfect lotus blossoms?

"Oh, I'm sure they're lovely to look at," said Peloux. "I'm just wondering how you feel, Lily, having to go on living with them from day to day, when you can't put them aside after looking at them. When you have to go on trying to walk with them, every day of your life. I'm sure it's quite nice to have the limbs of a nineteenth century lady. But not, perhaps, when you're a twentieth century woman.

"I don't mean to pry, Lily. But something puzzles me. You're very young, and certainly you're an educated woman from a modem family. I was really under the impression that the fashion for footbinding was long past, by the time your generation came along. How did you come to be this way?"

Lily pursed her lips, tilted her head.

"If you must know," she said, "no, it's not fashionable. 

"And if you must know how I came to be this way, it's simple. 

"During the war, my mother married a Frenchman. He wasn't my father. I was five when they married, and six when Mother died.

"My stepfather was an eccentric man, an importer, a dealer in curios. He was fascinated with Chinese antiquities. And with this little Chinese girl he'd suddenly got possession of. And then one time, a collector sold him some rare materials, the actual footbindings that had been used on the daughters of one of the imperial courtesans. And he had the idea to try a little experiment."

She bent down, touched the brocaded slippers. "You see how well it went?" she asked softly.

 

***

 

Lily felt hideous that evening. It was cold and pelting rain outside. Her dinner was a very good one--lobster bisque, broiled whitefish with asparagus, and baked alaska--and this did cheer her up a bit. Yvonne, noticing her companion's mood, tried to distract her with some gossip.

"They say the Baronne has a fancy man she's been keeping out here. Nobody's actually seen him. Some people say he's deformed so no one can stand to look at him. Maybe she thinks if she packs him in mudbaths long enough he'll turn beautiful.

"They also say it's so discreet here that anything could happen and no one would ever hear about it. I heard there was a woman who murdered her daughter in one of the bungalows and then left. They didn't fmd the body for a week!"

"I should have thought they'd change the linen more often than that!" said Lily.

“It's just a story I heard. How well did you know the Baronne before you came out here?"

"Not very well. She used to hobnob a lot with Wong in Paris, but she never seemed very much interested in me. I don't think she really cares much for women."

"That's not what I heard," breathed Yvonne. "What I heard about her and Dietrich--"

"Oh, no, oh, no, don't tell me!" squeaked Lily, holding her hands over her ears,

"Ah! Why is everyone but the French so prim, when it comes to these things?" Yvonne sighed. "I'll never understand it. It's quite beautiful, really, when you think of it, that there are so many ways for us to love."

 

***

 

Yvonne was up before dawn. She went out onto the beach in a simple sweater and trousers, her feet bare. She didn't give a damn how cold it was. Perfect night! Have I ever seen such perfect darkness before?

When Yvonne made her living getting killed or maimed sixteen times a week at the Theatre des Horreurs, she made a practice of reassuring herself, when she was offstage, of her bodily wholeness and well-being. Now, with the strains and hazards she must negotiate every day at the studio, and the sadness about Stephen always with her, it was even more important to savor the world and sound her own reserves of strength and vigor. She'd been taking lessons in breathing and stretching from a yogi in Pasadena, which had not only brought her moments of serenity she hadn't known in years, but were also doing pleasing things to her figure.

Seated in the damp sand, legs folded in inverse tailor style, with heels on top of knees, she prepared to salute the rising sun. She heard a rhythmic sound coming from the sand bar on her right side. She turned her head, and in the grey light she saw the ghost of Dr. Gogol coming towards her.

She screamed! She tore her legs out of their contorted folds and ran down the beach, away from the bungalows, because that's where he came from.

She scrambled up the rocks bordering the main highway, feeling like her muscles and lungs were being torn to shreds, along with her feet. When she'd finally clambered up and crossed the road, she dared to look back, and saw the monster was gone. Still she hobbled on until she came to a little stand of tourist cabins. The manager there recognized her and she had no problem persuading him to let her use his telephone. She reached her servants at Hollylawn and told them where she was, to come get her, that they were returning home immediately.

 

***

 

The Baronne was in her office checking the bookkeeper's latest figures when Gogol stormed in.

"I heard a scream out there," she said, not looking up. "You're not molesting the clients, I hope?"

"You didn't tell me Yvonne was here!"

"I didn't think it worth mentioning. We don't turn away any customers here, no matter how lowly."

"How could you not let me know! You know what that woman means to me! "

"Is that why you tried to throttle her back in Paris?" the Baronne replied curtly.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Gogol, I shouldn't have said that," she said quite differently, an instant later. "I know you didn't do it. It's just that I never trusted that woman, with her lies, her disloyalty to you. I really would have discouraged her from coming here, but what could I do? She's a friend of Lily's."

"A friend of--of Lily?"

"Oh, yes, they're grand chums going years back."

The telephone rang. "Yes, this is the Baroness von Sieber. Oh, is she? I'm sorry to hear that. Was she dissatisfied with her treatment here at Hollylawn? Oh, I'm glad of that. Well, do tell her how honored we were to have her here and we hope she'll come back soon." She returned the receiver to its cradle firmly.

"That was Yvonne," said Gogol.

"Some underling of hers. She's fled the premises. Without settling her bill, of course."

"I chased her away."

"So that was her out there, shrieking?"

"Even now," mused Gogol, "she can't bear the sight of me.”

He put his hand over his face, drew the fingers down, pulling his features into momentary distortion.

"Gogol, you mustn't let yourself brood over that woman," the Baronne said, going to him. "Think of the progress you've made since you left Paris. You've got your health back. And look at all you've accomplished here so far. Your genius is in full flower again."

"Oh, but I'm so bored, Magdalena. Nothing challenging has come in in such a long time."

"What about that idea you had about Lily?"

"You're not serious, are you? You said it was out of the question."

"Oh, it's not totally out of the question."

"You mean that?"

"Since that day you showed me those photographs Wong took of those deformities on the ends of her legs, I'm beginning to think it might be worth it."

"I'd hate to involve you in something like this."

"I don't care about that. I'd do it. Yes, I would. But on one condition. Lily mustn't know about--you know."

"Do you think I'd tell her? She'd never agree to it if she knew."

"She might not agree to it anyway."

Gogol smirked.

"Oh, I think she would. She would if she thought that Wong wanted it. She must be feeling rather poorly right now, vath the baby gone, and Yvonne gone, and Wong so far away. She might be rather...  
suggestible."

 

***

 

The operation was exhausting; the procedure took nearly twelve hours to complete. It was much more difficult, Gogol found, getting the circulation going in the lower extremities, but finally they had achieved success.

Gogol was especially proud of himself. In many ways, this was more of a triumph than the hands of Orlac had been. He was nearly prostrate with fatigue, but still he couldn't sleep for lingering excitement. That night he went back to the surgery, to the little room they had prepared for Lily's postoperative recovery, and sent the nurse away. He wanted to examine his handiwork by himself. Beneath the bruises and stitches, he admired his own craftsmanship, the vigorous health of the tissues. There would be minimal scarring, and that could be quickly taken care of with a bit of additional plastic surgery--lucky he had been brushing up on this particular area lately. These feet would be the feet of a dancer, the feet of a marble nymph. He had chosen them well; they were a perfect match in skin tone, perfectly in proportion to the rest of her.

She was out of the anesthetic now, but still slept deeply under the morphine. Gogol went for his stethoscope. He unfastened her gown, reached underneath to listen.

"Dr. Gogol!"

The Baronne stood in the doorway.

"Are you attempting necrophilia with our patient, Doctor?"

"Be quiet, you'll wake her!" Gogol whispered defensively, slipping his hand quickly out frorn under the gown. The nurse returned, with her cup of coffee and magazine, and the Baronne took Gogol with her into her office. She sat on the edge of her desk, eyeing him ironically,

"I've always suspected there was something a little odd about you, Dr. Gogol," she said. "Now I think I know what it is.

"When I agreed to our...tissue-gathering expedition...it was with the understanding that our motives were purely scientific. I'm not a sadist, Dr. Gogol. I don't like taking life. But you convinced me it was the only way.”

"To obtain a fresh specimen, one that would match the specifications we needed. Yes, it was the only way possible."

"Agreed. But there was some other motivation on your part, wasn't there? I saw the way you looked when we had that girl there, when you took the knife to her. You seemed to be enjoying it."

"I didn't enjoy it. You're wrong. It was painful to me to see her suffering, a violation of everything I believe in. But I did it for a greater reason. I wanted to give Lily a better life. To right the wrong that had been done to her, when she was a helpless little child. That's the only thing I was thinking of."

“So you say."

"I know I'm not perfect," said Gogol. "In many ways, I've lost control of myself, since my life has been so deranged. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a torture chamber. And the iron maidens are closing in on me."

"Are you really that unhappy, Dr. Gogol?"

"To live a life without love. is there any greater unhappiness than that?"

He lay his head in her lap. She held him there, smoothing her fingers along the visible ridges of his skull.

"You're cruel to me," he said. "Once you were kind, and I had such hopes. Why do you say terrible things to me? And why do you turn away from me now, as if I repulsed you?"

"You're not ... repulsive, Gogol."

"You think I'm a monster," he said.

She looked at him steadily. "Of course you are," she said. "You are a superb monster, Gogol. And I take credit for creating you."

She held him closer, caressing him. "You frighten me, you do. You frighten everybody. Your greatness terrifies them. Your power. it's what I love most about you. You are like death itself, you sink your knife in without flinching. I suppose you'll destroy me one of these days. Isn't that what monsters always do to their makers?"

“I only wanted to love you," sighed Gogol.

"But you can't. That's the grandeur of our situation."

Gogol kneaded the fabric of her dress like a cat. "Perhaps if I looked like Ernst Giese," he said, "you wouldn't think I was such a monster."  
"Now don't be ridiculous. I've told you, Ernst is just a friend."

"But he's with you every night. I've stood at your window, I've heard you. I've seen what you do together."

"Oh, have you?" She thoughtfully fingered the ridge of his brain pan. "Then you know I'm just playing with him," she said. "That I don't really love hirn. Not the way I love you, Gogol."

"I don't understand this," said Gogol unhappily.

She bent down again, to kiss his quivering eyelids. "Do you think that I do?" she whispered.

 

***

 

"Just listen to this little item, Madame!" said Ernst, dabbing crumbs off his moustache with a serviette. “'Gruesome Slaying Rocks Chinatown. Public hysteria is mounting over the discovery Thursday morning of the mutilated body of a twenty-five-year-old nightclub hostess--"'

"Disgusting! Shut up, Ernst."

"What do they mean by ‘mutilated'?" he said, turning the page. "I'll have to wait for the details in the ‘Police Gazette."'

 

***

 

"They are awfully ugly now," "Peloux" told Lily. "But just do everything exactly as I tell you and they'll be as pretty as your other ones. Your husband will adore them."

Lily was prepared for pain, but nothing like this. The painkillers didn't really take away the feeling; they just made her too dazed to concentrate on it. And Peloux said she might be on crutches for another month at least. In order to encourage her, Peloux gave her a book of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales, marked at "The Little Mermaid." Like the little sea creature who gave up her tailfin in order to walk on two feet alongside her beloved, she would have to suffer as though she were stepping on knives. But what mattered was that it was all done for love.

Lily couldn't bring herself to read that story. She kept flipping forward to another one that was just as grisly, but somehow more appealing, the little girl who dreamed of red shoes, that danced away with her the minute she put them on.

 

***

 

"Can you forgive us?"

"Oh, God, if it's what she wanted, it wasn't for you to refuse."

Wong worked his fingers into the roots of his hair.

"He did his usual incomparable work, I'm grateu for that," he said. "But you understand it's a shock to send your wife out to recuperate, and come here and find her in bandages."

He looked about him, wonderingly. "It's like the Gogol Clinic in miniature," he said. "And you paid for all this yourselves?"

"Hollylawn paid for it," said the Baronne. "It's quite a profitable concern."

"Of course it's illegal."

"But we're very careful. No one will ever find out."

Wong went into the recovery room, sat down on the edge of the bed. "How you must care for him," he said, "to take such terrible chances for his sake."

"Haven't we both?"

Wong smiled.

"I don't suppose you've had the chance to try out your formula again," he said.

"No, I haven't. I don't think I ever will use it again."

"What about Gogol? Have you ever shown the notebooks to him?"

"Oh, yes, of course. But it was funny, he didn't seem that interested, You know I wonder. With that relentless researcher's mind of his, maybe he's discovered a method of his own."

 

***

 

Lily was almost asleep when she saw the girl sitting in the chair next to her bed. "So he likes your feet?" asked the girl.

"Of course he does," Lily drawled, vague about how this slutty creature had gotten into her room. "He sent me here to get them."

"That's what they tricked you into thinking, but it’s not true. He's not to blame for any of this. Still, he'll be mad about your dear little feet. Especially when Gogol fixes them up so they don't look like Frankenstein feet.”

"Dr. Gogol is dead," Lily murmured.

"Pardon me. He's ALIVE," retorted the girl, "and VERY strong, and with a TERRIBLE temper. You'd better watch out for him! Your friend had the right idea, running away from him."

Lily remembered reading that often you would meet a ghost, and even talk to it, without realizing what it really was.

"You needn't run from ME," said the girl. "You can't, anyway. But when you're got those really working, you just wait and watch how you'll dance!" Then the ghost girl giggled, and wriggled her legs in the air--legs, with nothing on the ends of them but ragged ends of bone and soft tissue--and was gone. Lily thought she heard screaming; it was the phone ringing.

"Darling, we were all talking, and they drove me out somewhere, very far away and I don't want you to worry, darling, but I'm going to be late tonight."

My husband is out with murderers and they're getting him drunk.

"Who's there with you, Wong?"

 

"The Baronne, and Ernst, we went in his car, and some friends of Ernst--I think they're his friends."

"And Gogol?" she said sharply.

"Gogol," he muttered and laughed. "No, we didn't invite Gogol, I don't think he'd like the music in this place."

Truth in wine.

"Could you please come home right away? I'm frightened all alone. I hear the coyote dogs outside, and I'm afraid."

"Oh LilyI'll be back as soon as I can, I'll hire a cab--" He started shouting at someone, seemed to forget he'd been talking to her.

She lay there waiting for him to remember she was still on the line, and felt the dead woman's feet at the end of her legs start to throb.

 

***

 

"Magdalena, don't I recall you doing some sort of study on agnathans when you were at university?" Ernst asked her at supper one night.

"Oh, yes! I published a paper about the comparative reproductive capabilities of the hagfish and lamper eel."

"That's what I thought. In case you're still interested in the subject, there's a man I want you to meet. He's a former patient of mine and it seems he's started a venture down by Long Beach harbor. It's a sort of lamprey hatchery."

"WHAT--no!" the Baronne squeaked.

"He's raising them in tanks. He has an idea he can sell them to restaurants as a gourmet delicacy. I had no idea they were edible."

"Oh, yes, they're in the ‘Larousse gastronomique.' But they're not exactly fashionable. They haven't really been since the twelfth century."

"I can't understand why anyone would want to eat a bloodsucking parasite."

"You know the French, they'll eat anything."

"Well, would you like to see this lamprey farm?"

"I'd love it! I haven't seen one of those little fellows since I had one skinned and pinned to a trayful of wax, oh my goodness, it's been twelve years at least!"

The lamprey hatchery turned out to be located in a converted boat house on the grounds of a summer house owned by Mr. Griffith, a retired library director. The beasts lived in an enormous tank, ten feet high and twice as wide, with panels of glass alternating with reinforced steel so that the tank's inhabitants could be observed on all sides.

Inside the tank was a diorama of hell. Long, wiggling tubes of gray and mottled brown held to the sides of the tank, their sucker jaws flattened against the panes, revealing the circles of rasping teeth surrounding the central gaping cloaca of a mouth. Some of the luckier lampreys had buried their suckers into the flesh of a few sunfish Griffith had tossed into the tank, who drifted with helpless expressions, near to giving up the ghost as the parasites choked down the vital fluids from their bodies. A couple of the fish were already dead and floating at the surface, while a few hopeful hangers-on still clung to their sides. A few enterprising lampreys, despairing of a better meal, had battened onto their bigger brothers. Ernst thought he glimpsed two lampreys sucking each other.

"You've got far too many of them in there, Mr. Griffith," said the Baronne. "They aren't school fish, they're predators and they need room to prowl and feed. Where are the young ones?"

"There's one of my problems," said Mr. Griffith. "As soon as the little ones come, they eat them up. I don't know how they do it! Just suck them in and digest them, I guess."

"Overcrowding's your problem. And you don't feed them enough. They shouldn't be cannibalizing each other, that's a bad sign."

"I don't know what to do," said Mr. Griffith. "I can't afford another tank right now."

"Well, you've got a swimming pool," said the Baronne. "Drain that and fill it with sand and sea water. Make that your spawning pool, put in the breeders and then take them out before they can go after the hatchlings. They'll be happy enough in there, if you put a canopy over it so they don't get sunburned. They're used the ocean floor, you know, where it's dark. I understand you're breeding them as food fish?"

"That was the idea. But I've come to like the little wigglers. See those big eyes looking at you? They're cute. How do you eat that?"

Touched by her willingness to share advice, Griffith fished out one of the better specimens and gave it to the Baronne. She examined it tail to snout, pointing out to Ernst the unique configuration of the suckermouth, the genitals, the rudimentary gills. Then she flung it back over the edge of the tank, to dazedly snap itself back into the brackish, lamper eel-clogged depths.

"That man shouldn't be allowed to keep those animals under those conditions," the Baronne told Ernst as they drove back to Hollylawn. "Someone should really call the Anti-Cruelty Society about this."

 

***

 

Gogol could not help smiling as he saw Lily hobble into his office. "You're looking resplendent these days, Lily," he said. 

"So are you, Doctor Gogol," she replied. "Considering you're dead."

His huge, round eyes grew rounder. "So you know." 

"Wong told me." 

He sat down heavily. "What did he tell you?”

"He confessed everything. How you faked your death and came here pretending to be Dr. Peloux. How he and the Baronne helped you."

"Then you understand why I had to deceive you about my identity. I'm sorry about that, Lily."

"Now that I've caught you in one lie, why should I believe anything you say?" she sniffed.

"From now on," she added, "I will go to a reputable doctor."

His pale face contorted in rage. "I AM a reputable doctor!"

"Then why did you tell me that Wong wanted me to have this operation? You see, I caught you in another lie! What are you trying to do to me, drive me mad with your lies and make me into another Stephen Orlac?"

"Orlac was an IDIOT!" roared Gogol. "He was INSANE! He--he took those hands, those hands I gave him, my greatest work, and--and--he used them to KILL, to MURDER!"

"And Yvonne. I suppose that's why you really wanted me here, to lure my friend to you.”

"No, I swear to you, Lily, I never wanted that. I was thinking only of your welfare, I wanted to help you."

"Like you helped her? Like you helped Stephen?"

A horrible smile. "Is that what you're thinking, Lily? That I gave you the feet of a murderer?"

Lily looked down at her bandaged feet. "I have no idea whose they are," she said. "But I think I know how you got them."

"How would you know? I got them through a secret arrangement with the San Diego coroner's office."

"So you say. " 

She realized she was in real pain now; she'd refused morphine this morning, believing she wouldn't need it, and she'd never felt the sharp fullness of her pain before. She went to sit down. Gogol tried to help her; she pushed him away and nearly lost balance. She cursed at him in her own language; Gogol moved away with a look of sudden unease.

"Don't think I'm so grateful to be able to walk on these big fat feet," she said, as the pangs subsided. "I was happy in my wheelchair."

"Are you going to tell Yvonne about me?"

"How do you know I haven't warned her already? Don't you think I'd warn my friend that a man who destroyed her life, who she thought was dead, was this near to her? Of course I told her," she added quickly.

"What did she say?"

"That she hates you. That she wishes you WERE dead. She's hired guards to watch her all day and night so you can't get near her. And more than that, there are gangsters she knows that she's told about you. And they've sworn that if you so much as show your face in her window, they'll take a knife, and they'll do things to you so bad that not even WONG could put you back together again." She banged her crutches on his desk so hard that he jumped.

She thought she saw a reflection of her own face, grinning there in the dimness, as she went through the passageway out of his office. She'd really hoodwinked him. Of course she hadn't told Yvonne about Gogol. There was no need to frighten her, or poor Stephen, with the knowledge that their tormentor was still alive. As long as he stayed away from them, it didn't matter.

But then, he was so clever. What if it was part of his plan, to let Yvonne think that he was dead, and then slip in on her one night? Of course, he wouldn't dare now, for fear of those phantom guards and gangsters she'd invented to ward him off. She would have to persuade Wong to take her away, soon. She was sickened by the thought of staying in such proximity to Gogol. She thought of how the Baronne doted on him, and wondered what was wrong with her as well.

 

***

 

After an emergency appointment with Dr. Romm that evening, Gogol decided to dine in Chinatown. After that he strolled in the district, stopping in clothing and curio shops. A few things caught his eye: a little plaster Buddha, silken scarves, a green satin dressing gown. He noticed the posters that were up wherever he went, covered in picture writing, with a photograph of a young woman on them.

He walked down Alvarado Street. Along the way he stopped to talk to a Mexican girl with long, black curly hair and a rosepetal face. They walked several blocks to a little bar, where Gogol treated her to some tropical fruit drinks. The girl then went to a hotel next door where she registered as Mrs. Lopez--not her real name. Gogol went up the back stairs of the hotel several minutes later.

The maid discovered what was left of her the following afternoon. The wrists and legs had been tied down with scarves, and in her mouth--they had to cut the green sash loose to get to it--they found a small plaster Buddha with its head bitten off.

 

***

 

“I'm so glad you came, Lily," said Yvonne, kissing her. "I was afraid you'd never speak to me after the way I acted at Hollylawn."

"I'm just glad you called me!" said Lily. "I was worried about you all these months."

"But I wrote to you several times. Didn't you get my letters?"

"No," said Lily, uneasy.

"Doesn't matter. Everything's so primitive out here, they probably still deliver the post by pony express."

"Good afternoon, Mme. Orlac. Would you care for an aperitif to start with?"

"Oh, no, Charles, I'm watching my figure these days, I mustn't indulge. I'll just have the usual, salade nicoise and a mineral water."

"I'll have the same."

"It's so good to see you, Lily, I really feel like crying. How is Wong? You must miss him terribly."

"No I don't. He's here."

"How wonderful! Taking a sabbatical from the Gogol Institute?"

"Yes. There's been some troubles there lately.... He's thinking of leaving Paris altogether and setting up a practice out here. Some people are interested in him setting up a clinic for restorative surgery, something along the lines of the Gogol Clinic."

"I'm sure it would be a great success. There aren't many surgeons of your husband's caliber in these parts; we'd be lucky to have him. How about you, Lily? Do you like it here, well enough to settle here?"

"No," said Lily. "But we're worried about the situation in Europe, with the Germans." 

"I know. I'm so worried about Stephen, all alone in Paris. I've tried to make arrangements with the immigration authorities, but they keep turning me down. They have a rule against admitting people from mental institutions."

"Oh, Yvonne, I'm sorry."

"I really hoped he'd be better by now," said Yvonne, her lovely eyes bright with tears. "But without his music he's a broken man. They let him have a piano, but he says it's useless. His hands won't obey.

"Well, though, life carries on," she continued, dabbing away the melted mascara and trying to smile. "I've been getting a lot of work. The studio's hiring me out constantly. I'm starting a new film at Universal next week."

"That's wonderful."

"Oh, I'm making lots of money. I've nearly got all my debts paid off. Though it hasn't always been easy for me. I'm continually fighting the men off. It's hard turning them down sometimes. They're awfully tempting, they're all so beautiful here. But I want to be true to Stephen. He'll be free someday, I believe that. And I want to be ready for him, to start life over again with him. Without shame or regret."

"You're an unusual woman, Yvonne. "

"Unusual? No, I don't think so," Yvonne said, with a sad smile. "I'm simply a woman in love, that's all."

The waiter came; Yvonne toasted her with her mineral water. "It really ought to be champagne," she said. "I can't get over the sight of you walking like this, Lily. Who is this miraculous surgeon who treated you?"

"Just someone Wong knew from Paris."

"I can't believe you healed so quickly. I hope you'll pardon my asking this, but I'm curious to know, what exactly did he do?"

"Injected them with a growth hormone. Bone-lengthening exercises, special massaging machines, that sort of thing.”

"Sounds like something out of an Yvonne Orlac movie."

"It wasn't so bad. Hurt at first. But I'm pleased with the results."

"I'd almost think that Gogol had done one of his operations on you."

Lily nearly choked on an anchovy.

“Poor girl! It's dry work, munching through all these olives and fishes. Oh, Charles, won't you bring us some of that '32 Chardonnay?

"I suppose I ought to tell you, Lily, since you didn't get my letter, why I abandoned you at Hollylawn.”

"There's no reason to explain."

“But I think I should. Not that there’s any excuse for leaving a friend without explanation. You see, what happened was, the day I left I saw Gogol. On the beach. You’ll think I’m mad. But I really did see him. I was terrified. I thought, he’s followed me here, he’s going to kill me. I really thought at first it was him. Then I realized later what it was. That’s the thing about ghosts: when you see them, it’s like flesh and blood. You could touch them, they’re that real. I was too terrified to go back after seeing him there. Though I realized that was ridiculous: a ghost could follow me, he could come to me anywhere. But I haven’t seen him again, since that day.”

Charles brought the wine: she drank half a glass straight off.

“I can’t tell you how it disturbed me. I’ve lived in fear of his apparition every minute since I saw him. My doctor gave me pills recently, though, they’re a godsend. I take them and feel so peaceful and happy, I fall asleep right off. They chase away the nightmares, too.” She helped herself to more wine.

“Anyway, I decided to go to a spiritualist. She’s a Swedish woman, really delightful. Not at all spooky. I told her I didn’t want to get in contact with Gogol--just to find out what he wanted, how I might take steps to keep him away, or if I couldn’t do that, at least, when I might expect him, so he wouldn’t take me so much by surprise again. 

“So she said she’d find out for me. She didn’t turn out the light or do table-rapping or anything of that sort. She just poured water into a clear glass bowl, and looked into it.

“She said it was a very strange situation, something she’d never seen before. The best she could make out was that Gogol was in Purgatory, that the angels had sent him there to atone for his sins against Stephen and me. She said it was terrible for him there, that the trials that Satan and God had devised to cleanse his soul were like--oh, I can’t tell you the things she said. I’m still trying to forget them.

“But then something even more terrible happened. Something tore him up from Purgatory--out of the hands of the avenging angels. She said she heard Gogol screaming--you see, for all his torments, he didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay and make atonement for his crimes. But whatever it was, this force, it wouldn’t let him. It took him out of the hands of God and set him in a sort of twilit world, where he’d be forced to live a sort of living death, still in his earthly form. That’s where he is right now.

“But she says there is hope for him. You see, God is so merciful, he’s decided to make him live out this half-life of his as a sort of Purgatory on earth. That’s why I saw him. That’s the punishment the angels have planned for him. To walk the earth longing for love, but never to experience it. He can look at me all he wants, but knows he can never have me. That is the greatest punishment of all. So, in a way, it’s me that’s haunting him.”

She permitted herself another half-glass.  
“How long is he going to stay on Earth? Did she tell you that?” asked Lily.

“Not much longer,” Yvonne said. “They’re ready for him in Heaven. It all depends.”

“On what?”

"On me. Whether I can take his sufferings to heart and forgive him. Once they see that his earthly debts are paid, that he's finally earned the gift of pure love from the woman he wronged, then the angels will send for him."

"So it all depends on you, then."

"I'll tell you, it's a terrible responsibility. I'm finished with this salad, Charles. Bring me a cognac.

"I've talked to the priest about it. He says I shouldn't listen to her, that it was all Satan's lies, and besides Gogol couldn't possibly go to Heaven or Purgatory, since God would send a person of his persuasion straight to Hell. Still he says I must find a way to put hatred out of my heart, that I must pray for him every day. The angels will hear me and take account of it, and perhaps his torments may be lessened."

Maybe he isn't human after all, thought Lily. Maybe he's some sort of devil. He's put a spell on me, with this thing he's done to me. I don't feel like myself anymore, sometimes. Look at her. She's under his spell too. All this talk about love and forgiveness. Why shouldn't she hate him? Look what he's done to her!

"Now darling," Yvonne said, getting up rather stiffly and carefully. "I've bored you with ghost stories enough today. Time to go shopping. I'm going to take you to a marvelous store called Bullocks and I'm going to buy all sorts of shoes for you there. I'm going to transform you--you won't know yourself! You'll drive all the men mad!"

 

***

 

Wong seemed different to Lily now. He was always a relatively sober man before, but now he went out often with the Baronne and Ernst, whose company she avoided whenever possible; they were too fast for her and it bored her to try to talk to them after they'd started drinking. She might have enjoyed going out for some of his other occasions--to meet some of the medical people he'd been getting to know out here, for instance--but he'd fallen out of the habit of taking her along back in Paris, leaving her to her books and radio instead. Wong said there was no question of going back to the Gogol Clinic, since it was nearly bankrupt now; neither the government nor private donors could be persuaded to continue supporting an institution whose name was connected to bloodlust and madness. Better that Wong protect his own good name and career by starting afresh somewhere else. Lily knew what was in the offing. This clinic the Baronne was dangling in front of Wong was just another variation on Hollylawn, a deceitful venture whose real purpose was to provide a secret opportunity for Gogol to get his knife into people. And Wong refused to see that the Baronne and Gogol were just using him, as they used him before, leading him into even more ruinous danger. "That's nonsense, Lily. I don't need Gogol anymore, and they know it. It's me they want." 

Yes, they know you're the only respectable surgeon who'd work with that demon.

And he seemed to be absorbing their attitude towards everything, including her. Before he had been so considerate and attentive. Now he treated her like all these Europeans treated their wives, like she was a man, almost. The only time he seemed to acknowledge her as a wife was when they were alone together at night, and even that was different. Where were those quiet nights of shy embraces? He behaved like it was some sort of athletic competition that went on forever, and he was constantly surprising her with some new trick he'd learned, who could guess where. He was being corrupted by these friends of his. But at least it distracted her from the dullness of this desert life. She persuaded him to find them an apartment in the city, where there was something to do, and she could at least get away from the rancid goings-on at Hollylawn. But half the time, on some pretext or other, they would still be staying in the bungalow at Hollylawn, which Wong had all but taken as his permanent residence. Wong was always in some sort of conference or consultation at the main building, and he wanted Lily to be close at hand, to prepare his tea and the dumplings he liked, to hold him in her arms when he was tired. "He came out here to nurse me, and now I'm his nurse," she complained to Yvonne. 

"You're lucky. At least you have your husband." 

And at least, Lily reasoned, I can keep him from becoming another Gogol. 

 

***

 

In the last few weeks, in the idleness following Lily's recovery, Gogol had undergone a decided change. The Baronne barely saw him anymore. Sometimes she heard the low quaver of his little pipe organ as he played late into the night; other times he disappeared, taking her car and not returning until morning. Perhaps he had found himself a woman. Then one day she found a note tucked into the comer of her desk blotter. Come see me at ten o'clock tonight. Ooh, we're not starting with that business again. Besides, Ernst was coming over. Perhaps she'd just ignore it. 

When ten o'clock came, Ernst was very understanding. "I'll just listen to the symphony until you're finished with him," he said. 

As it happened, Gogol was anything but amorous that night. He sat her down and started piling anatomical sketches in her lap, chattering all the while. The problems with conventional plastic surgery.... Injections, stretching the skin no solution... What more sensible and elegant way to create the illusion of youth than to transplant the reality of youth? The living skin of a young woman, transplanted onto the musculature of a mature one.... 

"Fine idea," the Baronne said at last. "But how do you get a girl to part with her skin in the first place?" 

"The usual way." 

"You mean, raiding the local mortuary." 

"No-no-no, don't you see, it wouldn't work if the donor were dead for more than a few minutes, or died under less than optimal circumstances. Disfigurement or discoloration of any kind would be unacceptable for our purposes. And how long would we have to wait to find an appropriate donor for a particular patient?" 

"Well, too bad. It seemed an ingenious solution." 

"It is ingenious. We should do it. This is the idea we've been waiting for. Hollylawn's perfect for it! All these pitiful women we've been seeing, so desperate to be made young again. Imagine how they'll come to us if we can actually do it!" 

"And where, I repeat, will we find all these beautiful skins to harvest for this purpose?" 

"Hollywood," he breathed. "It's perfect. All the young girls from all over this country. The choicest specimens. All alone, no parents or friends with them. They come here to be in the pictures, you know. They run out of money and luck and they're desperate. Some of them you can buy for two dollars on the street. They could just disappear--no one would know!" 

"Like that girl in Chinatown?" 

"That's irrelevant," said Gogol. "The Chinese are a different race. They all look after one another. Now the Americans--they're disappearing all the time. Even if they notice one's missing, they stop looking after a while. Especially those girls in Hollywood. Who cares what happens to them? There are new ones coming in by the trainload all the time." 

"So you're going to start slaughtering young girls in quantity now?" 

"It would be easier if you'd help me." 

She flung the drawings in his face. She struck him with all her strength. "Monster!" 

She went to slap him again, saw the look on his face and cried out instead, in tearful pain. "Knowing I'd do anything for you..." 

Gogol said nothing. 

"Is there nothing so stupid or despicable that you wouldn't ask me to do it? I gave you life! Why did I do it? So you could undertake this kind of savagery? Do you want to go to the electric chair, Gogol? is that the final fulfillment of all my work, all my hopes for you--that you want to taste death in one final Grand Guignol?" 

She ran back to her cottage. "Things didn't go so well with the little doctor, I assume?" queried Ernst, turning down the radio. 

"You're right about him, Ernst. The man is mad." 

"Well, you were the last one on earth to find that out." 

"Wong told me once to watch him carefully, that he might possibly have suffered some sort of dementia. Now I'm thinking it's true, the man's not all there." 

"What did he do to bring this to your attention?" 

"He told me his plan to murder all the pretty girls in Hollywood." 

"I could have him committed for that." 

"No, I wouldn't do that! I wouldn't allow it. To cage him up in his condition--it would kill him." 

"Better that than have him turn into Jack the Ripper." 

"No, I can control him. He's my responsibility. I'll just keep a closer watch over him. Hire a nurse, maybe." 

"There are nurses all over this place." 

"No, a male nurse. Someone big and strong. We could make him stay in his cottage." 

"He'd be better off in a good institution." 

"But then he wouldn't have me! He needs someone to care for him, someone who understands him." 

"You're playing with a dangerous animal, Magdalena.”

"But he's mine. I understand him, you don't." 

"I feel nervous, with all these maniacs prowling outside," said Ernst. "Let's lock the doors and windows and light the fire." He settled her down, cuddled her, warming a cognac or her in his hands.  
"I'll tell you a story, darling," he said. "Actually, it's real natural history. As a zoologist, you'll appreciate it. 

"There's an ugly little fish that lives on the ocean floor. He's so nasty to look at that he chooses the darkest part of the sea to live in, where no other fish can find him. Once in his life, if he's lucky, a lady fish will swim by him, down there in the depths. And he gets so excited when that happens! He swims after her, and catches her by the waist, and kisses her so hard on the belly that his lips get stuck in her flesh. And she can't get away, no matter how hard she wriggles. And he hangs on, kissing and kissing until his mouth starts to grow right into her body. And the rest of his body starts to waste away, until all that's left of him is just a little appendage dangling from the lady fish. 

"And so he lives that way for the rest of his life, just riding along on his ladylove. And the only thing he ever does from that time on is to ejaculate every now and then. Could any lover ask for a more fortunate fate than that?" 

 

***

 

The Baronne had nearly fallen asleep in his arms when the telephone rang. Ernst gently pulled himself away to answer it. 

"Would you like to know where your little Gogol is right now?" he asked her, after hanging up. "He's been arrested for gross indecency and lewd conduct in a public place." 

She wanted to go after him. "No, I forbid it," he told her. "This is one situation in which a man would prefer not to be accompanied by a lady." 

 

***

 

Ernst entered the station calmly and grandly, introducing himself as Gogol's personal physician, and took aside the desk sergeant for a brief and amenable transaction. That done, he put on a stern, authoritative look as they led the released prisoner to his side. Putting his arm around him, he walked Gogol out of the station to his motorcar. "Get in the back," he said. Gogol obeyed, noticing belatedly that, as with the vehicle he had lately ridden in, the back seat doors couldn't be opened from the inside. "I'd ask you for the particulars," said Ernst as he jolted the car into gear and raced towards the highway, "but it'lI embarrass us both less if I tell you myself. You were in the theater that's playing ‘Stranger Behind the Door,' weren't you? You came in in the dark, you chose a seat away from the aisle. And you took it out during the scene when the villain was backing her down the hallway, with the knife in his hand. Yes?" 

"Were you there?" asked Gogol timorously. 

They had long since passed the turn for Hollylawn, but Gogol didn't want to mention it. Ernst was silent in such a cold way. They continued driving north for hours, not a word between them. Ernst stopped once at a filling station, and made a call at the phone box, then drove on straight. Gogol sat meekly watching the needle of the gas gauge sinking. There was pink on the horizon as they finally turned off the highway again, down a narrow unpaved road. He noticed the sign as they pulled in: Willowdale Sanitarium. Two men in white jackets approached the car as Ernst leaned over the seat to address Gogol. "You understand, it was this or the jail." 

"I understand," said Gogol. 

The jacketed men escorted Gogol, Ernst leading the way. After they had taken his belt and shoelaces, and shown him to his room with the grated window and metal door, Gogol looked gray as death. "Here's something I thought you'd want," Ernst said softly, taking from the orderly's tray a little cellophane-wrapped cone. Gogol gratefully lowered his trousers and bent over the bed as Ernst administered the dose. "How long must I stay here?" he asked.

"A week, maybe, until things quiet down," said Ernst, removing the rubber glove with a snap. "This afternoon I'll bring over some papers for you to sign, just a formality. The judge is a friend of mine. When they see you're no danger to yourself or the others, they won't want to keep you." 

"You won't tell the Baronne where I am?" 

"Of course not. She doesn't know anything about this. I’ll tell her you'd decided you were working too hard and went to the mountains for a rest." 

"Thank you.”

Dr. Yoder was waiting in his office. "I hear you've brought in quite a case for me," he said. 

"Ohhh, yes," replied Ernst. "Severe erotomania with delusions of reference. He's got the idea that he's having a big affair with some Hollywood starlet. Apparently he's attacked the woman before, though she hasn't pressed charges. You should tell your staff to use extra caution. I really think he's potentially homicidal. And of course he'll try to escape, so watch out for that." 

"I suppose he wants to go see his lady friend," said Dr. Yoder. 

“Dying to," said Ernst. "The poor girl's terrified." 

"Well, she needn’t worry. I've had cases that before, and I've never met one that wasn't incurable. Mr. Lover Man won't be coming to visit for a looooong time." 

 

***

 

"I drove all night," Ernst told her. "I looked everywhere I could think of. I have no idea where he went." 

He stroked the fresh tears away, kissed her. "Let him go, Magdalena," he whispered. 

 

***

 

It has long been thought that books and motion pictures, as entertainment for the masses, must be carefully regulated for their content, to make sure that potentially pernicious ideas and representations not be permitted to poison the minds of the public. This has been justified on the grounds that those morally degenerate and feebleminded individuals who cannot easily distinguish between reality and fantasy might be unduly influenced by that which is unwholesome. I have long been of a liberal frame of mind, believing that “no girl was ever seduced by a book.” But now a case has come before me that has convinced me that words and pictures can, indeed, corrupt. 

The case in question is a patient who came to me several months ago. “Mr. X,” a resident alien who claims to be of Ukrainian extraction but who displays unmistakable markings of the Hebrew race, is about thirty-five years old. Though he describes himself as a “poor peasant,” he is possessed of considerable refinement and quite extraordinary intellectual capacity. As a child, Mr. X had shown considerable promise at school, and his exceptional talents came to the attention of a philanthropist who generously offered to underwrite his tutelage. He took the boy with him to Paris, where he saw to it that he had every material and educational advantage. The lad eventually took a degree with highest honors and, with a bequest from his benefactor, now deceased, set up a thriving professional practice. A sudden illness, however, forced him to seek the sunny climes of our Golden State, where, unfortunately, his weakened condition, plus the fact that recent surgery had resulted in his becoming reliant on morphia, made it all too easy for his latent neuroses to overtake him.

 

When he was first admitted to my care, Mr. X had recently had a brush with the law. Apparently a woman in a movie theater had complained that her fox fur had been soiled with his ejaculate. Mr. X insisted to me that this was accidental, that he had meant to take his private pleasure without disturbing any of his fellow spectators, but that excitement had gotten the better of him. Though realizing the seriousness of his offense, he nevertheless was unable to admit that this incident might be symptomatic of a more generalized disorder. 

After Mr. X had been under observation for some times, it became apparent to the staff that his compulsion was of a habitual nature. Not only that, it was connected to a complex of phantasies of a particularly alarming nature, focusing on eroticized scenarios of violence and death. I asked him if he was familiar with the writings of de Sade, and he expressed distaste for them. He said he preferred the ‘vignettes’ of the Grand Guignol, and the Gothic poems and novels of Byron, Shelley, and Matthew Lewis. What gave him most delight, he said, was the idea of a beautiful woman in physical jeopardy. He confessed that he was fixated on an actress whom he had first seen on the stage in Paris, and whose subsequent film career he had followed devotedly. The specialty of his actress, need it be said, is depictions of suspense and terror in which she is frequently in peril of life and limb.

Although cultured and literate to an exceptional degree, Mr. X says he lately finds the most gratification in books and motion pictures of what most would consider a low nature. For instance, he is an eager “fan” of “horror” films, particularly the “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” ones. He spent several sessions in describing to me in detail these photoplays, which are apparently of a sequential nature, with continuing characters and situations which he discusses as though they were incidents he had personally witnessed, or had actually participated in. “I love them because I’ve lived them,” he told me once.

For a being fed on such gruesome food, how can we expect other than that he be a brooding pervert? Had he confined his reading to the Bible, to uplifting spiritual treatises and the inspirational works of such poets as Kipling and Tennyson, and avoided the cinema altogether, this man might have been a credit to his adopted nation and a contributing member of his community. But now he is a wasted, hollow creature, deserving of the darkest suspicion, untrustworthy in the company of women and children, doomed to being a burden on the citizens from whom he must be separated for their protection. For this man, it is too late to wean him from the weird and dispiriting phantasms that have corrupted his manhood, for he can truly enjoy no other. But what of future generations? Can they not be protected from following him to his pathetic fate--and ours?

Respectfully submitted, Carl Yoder, M.D., PSYCH 

 

A paper submitted to a symposium on the subject of Motion Pictures and Morality, chaired by Joseph Breen, October 27, 1937. 

 

***

 

The Baronne was having her massage when they brought her the telephone. "Is Dr. Giese there?" asked the man on the line. 

"Dr. Giese does not live here," she said. 

"He gave this as an emergency number. We've tried all the others. If he happens to come by there, could you tell him to call Dr. Yoder at Willowdale? It's about Mr. Pilloo." 

"What about him?" 

"He's escaped." 

As coolly as possible, she replied, "I'm Dr. Giese's associate. Could you tell me what happened exactly?" 

When Ernst arrived that evening at seven, the Baronne was not in her office as she'd said she would be. The door to her bungalow was bolted, and he found the orchids he had sent her that afternoon, along with his photograph, shredded on the doorstep. "I wonder what I've done this time," Ernst mused. "Well, I'll call her and find out tomorrow." He had spent most of the last night and morning in a private gambling club--losing--and wasn't in the mood for any emotional nonsense. 

As he walked back down the path to his car, he saw Lily coming in from the beach, dressed in pink, with a little gray mop dog in her arms. Ernst rather liked dogs, and he went to pass the time of day with her. Lily said his name was Marron, that he was new, just three months old. "He insists on a walk twice a day," she said. "But then he gets bored halfway through and wants to be taken in for a nap." 

It seemed Marron was a gift from her husband, to keep her company while he was busy. And what was Wong up to these days, as Ernst hardly saw him about anymore? Oh, meetings with colleagues, consulting work, a seminar he was teaching this fall at the university. Wong was taking care to cultivate opportunities here, since the situation in Europe was so dangerous, and of course they couldn't return home because of the threat from the Japanese. "I was worried about staying so long here, since Wong and I were only supposed to be visiting, she said. "But the Baronne said not to worry about it because she'd arranged it with someone she knows in the immigration office."

"Of course she would!"

Lily invited him to sit with her on her little terrace, and offered him tea--iced, naturally, as this was the desert, despite the meticulously irrigated orange trees and roses. Ernst found himself warming to Lily's lack of affectation, her quietly humorous demeanor. He felt in her the air of a true fellow emigre spirit, the determination to remember, but to be brave and make the best of it. "A friend of mine gave me tickets to the Schoenberg concert at the Hollywood Bowl," he said. "I don't suppose you'd be free to make an expedition with me this evening?" 

"Schoenberg! I'd be delighted, Dr. Giese.”  
\  
An Oriental beauty with a taste for twelvetone music! Ernst marveled at his discovery. Why hadn't he noticed her before? He waited outside with his tepid glass of tea as she went in to dress. Wonderful, how she made the transformation so quickly, so unusual for a beautiful woman.

"What a lovely little wrap!" 

"Wong gave it to me." 

“Another fur piece, like Marron! How kind of him!" 

California was the perfect place for a night out with a woman, Ernst decided, because when you come to get her in the early evening, it's still so hot that she wears her lightest gown, with her arms and shoulders all bare. But after the sun vanishes, it gets so cold suddenly that she has to huddle into her fur like a little animal, making it irresistible to pet her. As he sat next to her, watching the shifting ruffling of the mink over her shoulder, Ernst felt a keener understanding of Sacher-Masoch with his Venus in fur.

They were both very hungry after the performance, so Ernst took her to a favorite little chop house of his. Then it was getting very late, but neither of them was inclined to turn back just yet, so Ernst suggested they stop somewhere for a nightcap. "There's that place in the hotel, with the jazz," said Lily. "I forget what it's called but it's Yvonne's favorite place. Do you know which one I mean?" 

"I think I may," said Ernst, and took her there. 

They sat down and ordered, but neither felt really like drinking. There was a rather good orchestra playing the rhumba. "Do you think we could go out there?" asked Lily, nodding towards the undulating crowd on the dance floor. "I don't really know how to dance but they're all so drunk I don't think they'll notice."

Across the room, a little man with a drooping moustache and sad brown eyes watched, alert yet dreaming. I really must write a love story about Asians, he thought. Look at that saucy thing. Face like a little princess, but she moves like a cat trying to get at the cream. Oh, God, another goddess! I might as well find out who she is. Or I'll be buried in the casting directory all day tomorrow looking for her.

 

***

 

The Baronne sat listening to the symphony on the radio, the telephone at her side. This is his home, he's got to come back. where else could he go? Ernst hadn't dared to show his face all evening, the coward. She thought over and over what she would do to him, the next time she saw him. 

The door opened; she dug her fingers into the arms of the chair. It was Gogol. He was naked, soaking wet, his feet bleeding. For the first time, the Baronne felt afraid of him. 

"Where's Ernst?" he said. 

"He isn't here." 

"Do you know where he is?"  
"No, I don't." 

"That's lucky for both of you." He went to the sideboard and picked up the little knife she used to cut lemons and oranges for cocktails. 

"They're looking for you," she said. "The men from Willowdale have been here already. We've got to get you away before they come back." 

"No, I don't want to run anymore," said Gogol, narrowing his eyes as he made a careful incision in the rind of a lemon.

"But you don't understand, Gogol. Don't you know what that bastard Ernst did to you? He's had you legally committed. That means they can take you away from me--I can't stop them. They can lock you away for the rest of your life." 

"Oh, I'm aware of Dr. Giese's plans for me," replied Gogol, peeling the skin away from the lemon meat. 

"Please come away with me now. I have friends in South America, they'll hide us. Please, Gogol! Say you'll save yourself--say you'll go now!" 

Gogol plunged his knife abruptly into the mutilated fruit. "All right," he said. "I'll go with you. But first I want you to take me to see Yvonne." 

It was then the Baronne's heart was broken forever. 

 

***

 

He lay in the back seat, under the Baronne's coat, and while she drove he answered her questions. "That hospital had the worst security I've ever seen," he said. "Getting out was like a silly child's game." He had feigned a gall bladder attack, and in the infirmary had managed to strangle the nurse with her own stethoscope. "Just enough to put her out," he said. He had taken her keys, and in this way made his way out of the locked ward. From there he stealthily made it to one of the day release patient's rooms, helped himself to some street clothes, and climbed out the window. When he had walked far enough away from the sanitarium that it wouldn't be so suspicious, he tried to hitchhike, but no one would stop. Growing impatient, he lay in the road until a car was forced to stop for him. When the driver got out, he played possum until the man bent over him. Then Gogol smashed him with a rock. He then took his car and drove until the gas ran out. From there he walked. Before he came to Hollylawn, he bathed in the ocean and threw away his gory garments. "Simplest solution," he said. "If I'm bloody, I'm a murderer. If I'm naked, I'm just insane." 

At his request, the Baronne stopped at a newspaper stand on Sunset Boulevard and bought a map of the homes of the stars. "And after I'm finished with her," Gogol told her, "I want to see Ernst."

The Baronne knew the neighborhood; she'd been there before, visiting friends. The little bint has done well for herself, she thought, as they pulled up the drive leading to her villa. Gogol picked the lock on the gate and told her to take him right to the front door, then wait for him. His body glowed in the moonlight as he ran up to look in the windows. The lights were all out. She heard him snicker. "Oh, I don't see any guards, Madame!" he called to her softly. "I don't see Al Capone!" He danced round the shrubbery and disappeared. 

The Baronne looked at her watch. I'll give him seven minutes, she decided. If he hasn't killed her by then, I'll go in and help him. 

 

***

 

"Why, Dr. Gogol," Yvonne murmured. She smiled. She reached up unafraid and touched his face, cold as the moon. Gogol started at her suddenly animated beauty. "My poor Gogol," she sighed. "You couldn't stay away. You came back." Slowly, she rose, the sheet slipping away from her naked body. Her long, loose hair covered her breast, fell all the way to her waist. She seemed unashamed of her state, or his own. Yet there was nothing carnal in her demeanor. She had a dreamy expression, her eyes strangely soft. As she stepped into the moonlight, he noticed the irises were hugely dilated. He saw a prescription bottle on the bedstand. He tried to sneak a look at the label. "Come with me into the garden, Dr. Gogol." 

There were French windows that opened onto a terrace, with steps that led down to the lawn and the garden beyond. The colors were dazzling in the silverbluish light, contrasting strangely with the barren canyon on the horizon. "It's just like our garden at home," she said. "But you never saw that." She gazed at him, the hint of a smile on her lips. This was everything he'd ever fantasized about, but how different! "You loved me this much," she said. "To come all this way just to see me!" 

"Fifty miles is not so much," he whispered. 

She laughed so sweetly. "I'm glad you came to me, Gogol. And now we can bring all this to an end, forever. Now I can tell you that I've forgiven you. I mean that, truly. My only hope is that you find your peace now." She carne so close to him, he found he could barely breathe. "I don't hate you anymore," she said. She put her hands on his shoulders, and placed on his lips a chaste and delicate kiss. For a moment, Gogol thought he heard the rustle of angels’ wings. Then Yvonne cried out, as the Baronne yanked her to the ground by her hair. 

 

***

 

Lily broke away in midstep, and started to push her way off the dance floor. 

"Lily! Where are you going?" shouted Ernst. 

Lily hadn't the slightest idea. She ran out the door, not even thinking of getting her wrap from the hatcheck. Ernst came out just in time to see her climbing into his car. 

"Lily!" 

But she drove away without even looking in his direction. Well, he didn't think the evening had been going that badly! He noticed a cab nearby. Opening the door and leaning in, he murmured, "That green Rolls, with the woman at the wheel. Do you think you can catch up with it?" 

I guess I've finally gone mad, thought Lily as her feet, still tapping to the rhumba beat, chunked the pedals into top gear, as the motorists she wedged aside honked in outrage. I go off and start a fling with the Baronne's lover, and now I'm stealing his car--and I don't even know how to drive--well, maybe I learned subconsciously riding with Wong, and my feet certainly know what to do--and where am I now? She had passed the main drag with the lights and nightclubs, and was now ascending the hills, passing vast lawns, gates and privet hedges. It was terribly dark. Lily realized the valet had forgotten to turn the headlamps on for her. She found the switch just in time to stop herself running off a turn in the road. The path grew narrower and steeper; driving too fast, she was skimming along the ridge of a chasm, with half-hidden mansions glittering below her. She was lost, and this comforted her. The foot on the pedal relaxed, and she coasted down the hill, towards what she now recognized as Yvonne's house.  
Yvonne was gone, the servants were gone, the villa was dark and the door was wide open. Lily was thinking that perhaps she should call the police when she saw Gogol crawling out of the garden. Filthy, naked, chuckling to himself, he roared on seeing her. 

"So it's you, my little yellow Galatea!" He reared upon his knees. "Did the angels send for you, too?" 

"Where is she!" Lily shouted. "What did you do to her!" 

He fell back on his hands. "What do you think I did with her?" he said, morosely. 

She walked over and kicked him in the stomach. He fell over, grabbing her ankle; she jumped, frightened, trying to pull away. "Good work on that one!" he laughed, holding on as she hopped and struggled. "Very strong! " 

She tried to kick him off. Holding onto her foot with both hands, he gave it such a twist she screamed and fell. He laughed and tried to clamber on top of her. Panic ripped through her, as he whispered in her ear: "Would you like to know where your feet came from?" 

She smashed him in the nose with her elbow, then, as he opened his mouth to scream, rammed the palm of her hand under his chin. Then she was on her feet and she kicked him in the guts and kicked him in the face. She jumped on his chest; she heard the ribs crack. She danced on his writhing body, stopping only to grind her heel into his eye. Then those shoes Yvonne had bought her, their ivory satin soaked with blood, carried her back to the car, slammed on the pedals, and they were off again. 

 

***

 

Lily went in the door, but immediately had to run out. The stink of the place was unbearable. But she forced herself back, impelled herself to light matches till she found the string for the lightbulb. As she took in the stench, she found it became more tolerable; her nose grew number with each inhalation. There was an enormous, square tank of foul cloudy water. Yvonne was floating, her head just above the surface of the water. Someone had tethered her with a rope around her neck to the bottom of the tank, so that if she tried to swim to the sides she would strangle. With her arms raised, she could just manage, feebly, to tread water. Her eyes were shut, her face drawn as though she were thinking very hard. Around her, the surface of the water was crowded with long, gray, limp things, rocking softly in rhythm with Yvonne's slight movements. Some of the things moved below, in the water. They appeared to be large, headless eels, so many of them that Yvonne's body was indistinct. Then Lily noticed that Yvonne's body was covered in the things. They were eating her. She had to find something to climb up with, something to fish her out with. She ran around the tank; there was a stepladder on the other side. All right, and a long metal pole with a net on the end, taller than Lily was herself. She took it and clambered up, preparing to fish her out. But there was that damn noose. Lily poked at it with the end of the pole. It was on tight. The only way to get it loose would be either to cut the rope, or work it off by hand. But how could you do that without getting in the tank? Yvonne opened her eyes, looked right at her. "Don't worry, Yvonne," Lily said. "Just a little bit longer." She unfastened her grisly shoes, and flung them aside. She unzipped her gown, let it slide and shook it off. Then she jumped in without thinking that she knew less about swimming than she did about driving. Lucky, almost, she hadn't been an expert swimmer; she kicked so hard the monster eels lurched away. The rotting dead ones slapped her as her face hit them; she tasted the scum on her lips and retched. Thrashing her legs together, she found she could stay afloat more or less steadily enough to grab the noose. She pulled and pulled and shook Yvonne, nodding her as though she went no-no-no to the idea of coming free. But the noose came off, and Yvonne started to sink. "SWIM! SWIM!" screamed Lily, slapping madly at the dead eels, their slimy bodies jumping in the air as she splashed frantically, trying to hold on to Yvonne, trying not to sink herself, kicking as hard as she could to make herself somehow get back to the edge of the tank. 

Then there was Ernst, holding the net out to her. He stood there in his midnight blue evening jacket, wet with the slime she'd splashed at him, proferring the pole with an expression of such uncharacteristic amazement that she almost laughed. Lily grabbed and he pulled. Once she was partways out of the water, he helped her heave Yvonne's body out, a limp deadweight but with the eyes still blinking. Miraculously, none of the eels had attached themselves to Lily. Yvonne was covered with them. Their soft bodies squirming, suffocating, they still hung on, their little black eyes staring as their muzzles still held firmly onto Yvonne's flesh. Lily tried to grab one of the slippery things, to pull it off. "Don't!" said Ernst. "She might get blood poisoning."

"We can't just leave them there!" cried Lily. 

"No, you're right," he said. "We'll have to do it as carefully as we can." He felt in his pockets for a clean handkerchief, and took out a silver flask. He splashed the whiskey on his hands and rubbed them together, Carefully, he pried off one of the sucker mouths and dabbed the ghastly round hole left behind with a whiskey-soaked corner of handkerchief. Lily, sick to her stomach, nevertheless held out her hands for a splash of whiskey and set to helping him. "Now we've got to get her to a hospital," he said, after the last dead lamprey had been tossed onto the heap. 

"We'll take her to Hollylawn," said Lily. "Wong will help her." 

"No, she needs a transfusion. And these wounds need looking after, too." 

"They can do that at Hollylawn. They've got a whole surgical unit there." 

"At a beauty farm?" asked Ernst incredulously. 

"Oh, you've no idea," replied Lily. 

It makes sense, Ernst thought, as Lily, clad only in sopping, transparent underclothes, helped him carry Yvonne, naked except for Ernst's jacket, to the Rolls. (Thank God he'd sent that cab away!) After that business in France, all Yvonne needs is another good scandal to destroy her career entirely. Not to mention how it would probably end with the whole lot of us getting deported, if this ever got to the authorities. It's a long way from here to Hollylawn, but it's worth the chance. Besides, Wong will do her more good than those American quacks. 

Yvonne, her head on Lily's lap in the back seat, seemed to smile. "I think she's sleeping," said Lily. 

"Let me know if anything happens," Ernst said. "If she has convulsions or stops breathing. How are you feeling, Lily?" 

"My lungs hurt, and I feel ill. I think I swallowed some of that water." 

"You'll be all right. I think she will be, too. 

"My little mermaid!" he added, tenderly. "You saved her!" 

"You saved both of us." 

"Oh, you would have done all right without me. I saw you, punching those lampreys left and right." He lit a cigarette, without the holder this time, like an ordinary mortal. "It must have been Gogol who did this to her," he said. "He must have gotten away. I should have foreseen this." 

"It couldn't have been Gogol." 

"Of course it was. He's tried to kill her before. Who else would think of doing such a distasteful thing to such a charming woman?" 

"How long do you think she was in there?" 

"It couldn't have been more than half an hour. Any longer and she would have been completely drained." 

Then, she said slowly, "I know for a fact that it wasn't Gogol who did this." 

"How do you know?" 

She told him everything. "Are you sure he's dead?" asked Ernst. 

“No, I don't know, I didn't stop to look, I just ran and then I got in the car and it was like before at the nightclub, the car ran away with me and I didn't know why or where I was going. It was like someone forcing me all the way, or like a demon had taken me over. I didn't even see you were following me." 

"We weren't, half the time," said Ernst. "We kept losing you and circling round till you turned up again. I didn't even know that you stopped at the lamprey farm; I'd only pulled in there to use the telephone, and then there was my Rolls." 

"You know this place?" 

"Oh, yes, I've taken Magdalena out here several times." 

"Ohhh," said Lily, understanding it all, or thinking she did. Someone was pounding on his door. 

"Wong! Wake up! Come help me!" It was the Baronne, in a shredded black negligee, disheveled and weeping on his doorstep. Wong suddenly had a vision of how this great beauty was going to look as a very old woman. 

"He's in the motorcar," she said. "You've got to help me with him!" 

Together they carried him into the surgery, laid him out. Wong dutifully checked all the vital signs at her insistence, though it had obviously all been over with Gogol at least an hour ago. Clasping her arms round the stiffening body, she lay her head on his chest for a long time, as though listening for his heartbeat. She kissed his swollen face, unrepulsed by the blackening jelly that hung from his eye socket. Wong felt the tears stinging his eyes as he thought of how Lily would weep for him some day. This was the only thing worth bringing you back for, Gogol. To be mourned and missed like this. Now, after your lonely, broken life is finally done, there is one person in the world who has truly loved you. 

She slowly pulled herself up, folded her arms tightly. "We'll have to hurry," she said. "He'll rot in this condition." 

 

"I'll call the undertaker." 

"What are you talking about? He's still warm, we have plenty of time. Go put on your scrub clothes and I'll clean him up. We'll get him going again. That's paramount. We can fix up the eye later." 

"It's out of the question." 

"Ridiculous! We've got everything we need. I'll make up the conducting fluid in one of the spa tubs. We'll run in an electrical wire--you know how easy it is!" 

"Madame," he said, "even if I could take this thing here and make it into a human being again--would that be kind of us? Do you think he'd thank us for it?" 

"Please." 

"No, I won't do it." 

"Then you are murdering him!" 

"He's already been murdered twice already. Come here, Baroness." He held out his arms to her. She stiffly submitted as he embraced her. "I keep forgetting you're not a doctor," he said gently. "I keep forgetting what a difference that makes. 

"Don't you know," he said, "that sometimes it's just as urgent to let someone die as it is to make him live?" 

She wrenched away from him and moved back to the surgical table, touching Gogol's forehead and brushing the dried blood clots away from the mouth-sized wound in his temple where the rim of skull shone through like a row of teeth in a smile. Wong left her there, gazing down at Gogol like the Madonna in the Pieta, just in time to meet his half-naked wife, with Ernst following behind, another nude woman in his arms. "Get ready for a transfusion," said Ernst. "Gogol tried to bleed her to death. Or the Baronne did, we haven't decided." 

"Lily, where have you been all night?"

"Ernst took me out. We had a wonderful time! I'll tell you about it later," said Lily. "Look at these wounds on her. Do you think you can do anything about them?" 

Back in the secret surgery, Wong helped the Baronne load Gogol's corpse onto a gurney bed, and moved it into the recovery room. Then he quickly disinfected the steel table before they laid Yvonne down. "Do you have any illnesses or infections, have you had any recent injuries?" Wong asked Ernst. 

"My health's all right." 

"Good. Lie down there and roll up your sleeve." 

He set up the transfusion pump. "It's terrible to see marks like this on such a young woman,” said Wong, as he daubed her down with antiseptic. "She'll need skin grafts, and the sooner the better." 

"You can take them from me, Dr. Wong," said Ernst bravely between clenched teeth; blood always made him queasy. "I'm not so vain about my flawless skin." 

"That's gallant of you. But you're giving enough of yourself to her tonight. Actually, I have another donor in mind. Lily, could you fetch some strong tea for Dr. Giese, and some of those good rice buns? He'll be glad of them in a few minutes." 

The transfusion completed, Wong monitored Yvonne and Ernst for a few minutes. Then, while Lily helped Ernst to his well-earned refreshments, Wong went back to the recovery room, where the Baronne was washing the blood away from Gogol's bruised body. Wong brushed her aside and looked him over, turning him. "There's poetic beauty in this," he said. "He'd appreciate it." 

"Have you changed your mind?" the Baronne asked hopefully. 

"I won't help you revive him, that's final.”

"Then leave us alone." 

"I will. In fact, I'll make a bargain with you. I'll let you have him and do whatever you like with him, and I won't interfere at all. I won't even report you to the police, although I should. You're a bad woman, Baroness. Almost as wicked as he is." 

"But you'll let us alone? You'll let me have him?" 

"All I ask is to keep one bit of him for myself ." He showed her. "Right there. The skin off his thighs and his backside." 

Lily lay on the sofa in the Baronne's office, nibbling a rice bun. It was morning already, and they were still in surgery. She had slept a little and was feeling better. She understood everything now, and had decided to accept her fate reasonably. I've killed a man, and I've rescued a friend, and it's nothing to do with me. All I ever wanted to be was a quiet person, but that quietness has left me open to the powers of violence. I have no resistance. It's as if what I've done were the actions of somebody else. Wong and Gogol and the Baronne and Yvonne, they're all active people, and I stood in my stillness, with them rushing around me, and at last I became like the eye of the tornado, that can snatch people up and houses and trees and throw them all over the countryside.

She wasn't hungry, but still she gnawed at the rice bun. There was a poisonous, burning nausea that kept rising inside her, that could be kept down if she took little nibbles. She was relaxed and untroubled, and she recognized and even welcomed this feeling: she remembered it fondly. Little fish, you just stay there till you become a frog and a pig and then my little baby. And then you come out and see how much your mother will love you. 

Ernst emerged from the surgery, his eyes blinking blearily in deep, brownish hollows. "Nurse Giese reporting," he said. "Your husband's a master. That girl's going to have barely a mark on her, if the grafts take, and there's no reason to think they shouldn't. He said it was a new technique he used. Gogol invented it.”

Lily contemplatively stroked her flawless ankles. "This is a filthy business," she said. "What will they do with Gogol? Bury him or throw him in the ocean?" 

"He's already gone. They left while you were sleeping, Magdalena and her little monster. She packed him in ice and took him away. It looked like they were headed south. To Mexico, perhaps." 

"Crossing the border, with a dead body in the car?" 

"My girl, that woman has a way with customs agents you can't imagine. I've seen her smuggle bricks of hashish as though they were cakes of soap. 

"I wasted my time with her," he continued, fitting a cigarette into its ivory stem. "There I was chasing after her, with her chasing after that crawler Gogol, and him chasing after that actress, with her pining after that mad husband of hers. All this mad loving going on, only leading us to frustration and disaster. You and Wong are the only sane ones." 

"And you know," said Lily, "I don't love him." Ernst stared bemusedly. "Oh, I'm a good wife. I like the man and I think it'll be nice to raise a family with him as the father. But I've missed all this romance you people like to talk about. Sometimes I think, what would it have been like to have someone love me the way Gogol loved Yvonne? Could I have been as unmoved as she was by it? Not that I'd want HIM; he was sick in the head and one of the ugliest European men I've ever seen. But he loved Yvonne so much that no one could talk him out of it, not even Yvonne herself. He didn't just want to make love to her, either. He worshipped her as an artist. He wanted to please her so badly he invented the limb transplant; did you know what a breakthrough that was? The most horrible thing I did in killing him was destroying that knowledge; I don't know if he ever wrote it down, and Wong never really learned the method. Think about all the people who would have benefited from that, now that the big war’s coming." She paused, riding a new wave of wonderful nausea. "He killed for her. He was crazy of course, but you don't know what it is to kill a person; you have to live with it, with that person, for your whole life, wherever you go. He loved her badly, miserably badly. But he did love her. Of course I don't blame her for running away because he would have ended up killing her. And probably having her stuffed, too. And I will never love that way, myself. It's not in me; I'm a passionless person. I long sometimes to be loved like that so I'll know what it's like. But then I know I'd hate it, like everybody else does." 

Ernst was on the edge of saying something in reply, something unbearably foolish, but he was saved by Wong padding in in his surgical gown. He looked the same as he always did, cool, steady, just a single diagonal line under each eye revealing his exhaustion. "I think one of us should stay with her," said Wong. "When she comes out of the ether she's bound to be a little shellshocked. And we've got to keep an eye on those grafts, to make sure there's no bad reaction." 

"We'll take it in shifts," said Ernst. "I think I can manage about six hours, with some strong coffee and cigarettes. That will give you enough time to rest, and then the two of you can fight over who has to get up next." 

"I'll do it," said Wong. "Lily's the heroine of the day, so she deserves the extra sleep." 

"But I'm not sleepy," said Lily. "I've had a nap." 

"And I'm too wound up to lie down just now," said Wong. "Let's take a walk. That will wear us out." 

They went into the blinding sunlight. The sea rose like a wall before them. Lily tried not to think of the things lurking there, with their tentacles and suckers and round staring eyes. She looked towards the land and remembered they were in the desert. Everything green, everything living that really seemed alive, was transplanted from some more habitable climate, and kept alive only with floods of imported water. And the sea could not replenish them; it would only kill them. Wong put his arm around her. "I wish we could go home," Lily said. 

 

***

 

They were far away from any town, deep among the mountains. But the Baronne was unafraid. She had Victor's old pistol and hunting knife. More than that, there was Gogol, slumbering in the trunk of her car. To defend him, the possibility of him, she felt she'd have the natural advantage over any mountain lion or bandit that tried to best her. Another day's ride, that wasn't too bad, and they'd be at the hospital, where Dr. Aguirre would be there to meet them. If he had everything ready, according to her instructions, she could have things underway in twenty-four hours. She took the flashlight from her glove compartment, made a tour of the area. They were secure, isolated. The chill of the desert night would slow down the decomposition, she hoped, until she could find more ice somewhere. She leaned against the automobile. With a flashlight, she read again the note she'd carried in her pocket since she left Hollylawn. 

 

My dearest Magdalena, 

 

You may thank me or curse me for this parting gift. But I beg you to listen to it and consider its contents. Wong just told me that you intend to start again with Gogol. Yes, I know your secret; we all know the truth now. I know it's useless to try to persuade you not to do it, since nothing stopped you before. But this time, I warn you, you'll be alone with your creation, without me or Wong or any other friend to help or advise you. I want you to understand exactly who and what you will be bringing back into this world. I know that you believe that love can work miraculous changes in a man. And it can, I know it. I am reborn again myself, Magdalena, because of you. You drew me up from the depths of my former wasted life and brought me into the searing, painful light of love. 

 

"What an idiot!" muttered the Baronne. 

 

Maybe the miracle can work again. Perhaps, given another chance, you can bring this pathetic, damned soul back into the world. But be warned: he may not thank you for this opportunity. When you understand the horrors he has suffered, when you have looked into the gnarled recesses of his malformed psyche, will you not, perhaps, realize that he would not choose to resume this miserable life he lately led? Would it not be a greater act of love to leave him to the angels? 

 

"Angel yourself " 

 

Now that he is dead, again, I release this recording of our conversation to you, knowing that I can in ethical good conscience share it with you. Again, I don't wish to shock you or violate your memory of Gogol. I only want you to know who he was, what he was, and why. Be brave, dearest. Listen. And know that you are loved. 

Your ever faithful Ernst. 

 

The gramophone sat on the floor of the front seat. The Baronne opened the car door, reached for the gramophone, and set it down in the dust. She opened the lid, took out the beribboned disk. She would smash it. With a flick of her wrist, she would send it skimming into the darkness. 

She fingered the ribbon; it unfurled and fell away. Crouching, she set the disk on the spindle. Turning the crank, she set the needle to the spinning surface. And there, in the desolate night, with her face as still as the mountains, she heard the voice of her love, alive. 

 

July 1994


End file.
